Confessions and Denials
by sketchnurse
Summary: House and Cameron discuss life, relationships, misery and marriage. Cuddy tries to find closure. Nothing goes according to plan, because love doesn't go according to plan. House/Cameron friendship, Wilson/House friendship, House/Cuddy romance.
1. Chapter 1

**AU after 6.08. I've been working on this for a while, and have it completed, so everything should be up within the next few days. **

Why did he want what he couldn't have?

Because what he couldn't have was infinitely better than what he _did_ have, a miserable, lonely existence, and that _one thing_ that could make him morph into a person whose emotions remotely resembled happiness and contentment.

As irrational as it seemed, to spend even his waking hours adrift in fantasy, it was the only world in which _she_ didn't go home to someone other than himself.

He could deny it out loud all he wanted, but there was still a large part of him, growing stronger and more assertive every day, that wished his delusions of happiness had continued, to the point where his traumatized brain had showed him what life was like for the misanthropic jerks who _could_ give up their pride and get what they wanted.

He had just come from a very heated argument with Cuddy, and that had done nothing to keep his mind in reality, in the things that needed to happen there and then.

He ignored a newly rehired Taub as the shorter doctor explained about their current patient's liver failure, and walked into his office, mind whirling with a thousand things.

Different theories flew around his head, as well as pictures that would best be viewed later, and a throbbing sense of failure.

Fantasy allowed him to dwell on the things that he wanted to remember; reality let _everything_ in.

He wanted to focus on the look on Foreman's face when he had first regained his license.

The smell of pancakes wafting through Wilson's apartment, his best friend yelling to the living room that House needed to pick up more macadamia nuts if they were going to eat House's favourite breakfast _every_ morning.

The smile on his own face, a rare, beautiful thing, when had had gotten a secluded punk boy to trust him enough to clean the weeks old deep laceration on his arm, a thing that only his girlfriend had been trusted to do, a thing that a recently deceased car accident victim could never do, mumbled excuses about trust disappearing as soon as stories of his own childhood and overbearing father flowed from his lips, as easily as scotch had once flowed into the glasses he would leave by the piano. (It had almost been worth it, the renewed requirement for clinic duty).

The look on Cuddy's face when she realized just how _much_ it hurt him that he was untrustable, unreliable, a liability and a bad investment, at least according to what he had gleaned from her reluctantly watchful behaviour.

The beautiful, delicious sound that the door made when he slammed it in anger, after he shouted to her beautiful, vulturistic face that he _loved_ her, okay, would that ever be enough?

He wanted to remember these things, they were crisp, sharp, intense memories and he wanted to have something to remind him that life wasn't only lived at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey.

Everything else was hazy, and he didn't need it in his head.

He didn't need the sound of Foreman's voice telling him that just because he had his license back, he wasn't in the clear, reminding him of the duties that belonged to him once more.

He didn't need the cold, hard stare that he had gotten from an 18-year old's disapproving father, after he had escorted the now smiling young man out of Exam Room 2.

And he most definitely didn't need the memory of Lisa Cuddy's walls up, cold, uncaring stare after he had poured out the little bit of heart that he could actually get out of his chest to her.

He realized, clenching at his over-sized tennis fall, that she could _never _populate his fantasies again, not after _that_ argument, because every imagined smile, every fabricated kiss, every invented touch would fall through at the memory of her finally _not caring_.

Maybe this was the breaking point, when weak medications and Wilson's friendship and his medical puzzles couldn't do anything more to ease the pain, the pain that seemed to have spread everywhere in his body, as if his maimed thigh had held a cancer and the emotional stress had caused it migrate throughout his system.

It was funny that he had picked cancer, the miserable specialty of his now obviously troubled friend.

Perhaps some sort of infectious disease would have been more appropriate; after all, he and Wilson had both slipped further into their respective depressions at around the same time.

House stopped at a bench outside of the hospital, after his bitter musings had caused him to get up, mutter a possible diagnosis for his team to note, walk to the elevator, through the front lobby (not sparing even a _glance_ at the Dean of Medicine's office) and out the front door, to the harsh bitter cold that offered a contrast to the pulsing hot emptiness that he felt.

He sat down, feeling like shit, secretly reveling in the chill of the stone bench.

He put his head in his hands and looked through his fingers at the ground, knowing just how the brown, lifeless, and frostbitten patch of dirt felt.

He felt a presence sit next to him, feminine, and he wondered for a hopeless, irrational, desperate moment if it were Cuddy.

He felt a thrill of disappointment when he realized it was a numb, red-rimmed Allison Cameron.

She was no longer living with Chase, but had stayed at a hotel, waiting for the day an airplane would take her out of the _poisoned_ world she had been immersed in.

"What the hell's wrong with _you_?" he asked, in his true, blunt, House fashion.

"As if you don't know," she replied clippedly, as if the very action of responding was something that cost too much effort. House remained silent, still staring down at the ground. "Of course you know," she continued, obviously wanting to let off some steam. "Because you're the reason _he_ isn't coming with me, you're the reason that he's staying here, ending our marriage, it's all because YOU convinced him to!" House hadn't wanted Cameron to be the one sitting next to him for this precise reason: she would yell at him for what she considered to be an act of deepest betrayal. She deserved the wake-up call; she deserved the realization that Robert Chase couldn't cure her of her sickness for helping people.

"Is it MY fault that I pointed out that he would be better off staying here, where he can do well and not have to worry about a wife that isn't right for him, a wife who thought that he had been _poisoned_ into evil?"

She scoffed at that. "And what exactly would you know about who's right for Chase?" she asked heatedly.

"I know that you two were built on a rocky foundation, and that it was only inevitable that your whole _romance_ would blow up in your face."

"Hmm, so the fact that you've just ruined my life doesn't mean anything to you? I knew you were a bastard, but I thought that you maybe could feel _some_ remorse."

Bitter Cameron, she was one of the Camerons that he liked the most. Gone was the soft, fluffy, caring doctor, now he saw the woman who had been through a comparable hell, albeit not as bad as anything _he_ had been through.

"Remorse over what, fixing something that shouldn't have been broken in the first place?" he replied, feeling his misery intensifying; he hadn't wanted to think about anything else depressing, and yet here was a woman who needed to unload on him, who possibly, with correctly-placed stabs, could coax some sort of guilt out of him, guilt that he didn't need in his already fragile physical and mental state.

"Are you saying that we were just doomed from the start, House? That we were just _so_ incompatible that our entire relationship was just a ticking time bomb?"

"I'm saying, you deserve better than him, and he deserves better than you. You want to fix people; there wasn't much to fix with Chase, at least nothing that you could do any more than surface damage to." She looked surprised at his response, as if she were unsure that he could be serious about something like this. "And Chase is too selfish for you, too sensitive; he can't deal with your reluctance to let him it. He never trusted that you would support him in ANYTHING that he did. He didn't think that you would _ever_ forgive him for killing Dibala, and so he didn't tell you until you finally guilted him enough. You wanted to form connections with broken people, and Chase wanted romance, the kind of relationship that could last forever and never fade into the background. The caring that you two had for each other, the lust that you two shared, the long history of friendship, it wasn't enough. Nothing is ever enough, nothing will ever _be_ enough." He finished his speech with a sad look at his feet, hating that the words he had spoken were true and would _be_ true forever.

"Are you sure you're still talking about me and Chase?" He could feel her angry voice softening, the opportunity to comfort overcoming any resentment she wanted to express.

He supposed it was instinctual to her, helping people who were in need.

He somehow hadn't been born with that gene, he was born with the want to find answers and solve puzzles, a need that helped people as a byproduct in his profession.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he mumbled, looking up at her and looking down just as quickly, seeing the look of compassion despite the best reasons to ignore him, the look that he had learned to despise and resent over the years. "You two are the hot gossip around here; everyone at the Nurse's Station is abuzz with the latest on the _Chases_."

"Yeah, I'm sure that you're sitting out here in the cold on this bench without a jacket to get away from the droves of updates on _my_ personal life. Something's wrong with you." Sometimes he missed her deadpan sarcasm; it was infinitely more entertaining than Foreman's brand.

The emotion in hers was subtle, whereas his was non-existent.

What he didn't miss was what she was doing now; the waves of compassion and pity were what had turned him off of her in the first place.

He wasn't attracted to beauty, he could find that anywhere. He wanted someone who could keep up with him without getting their feelings easily hurt, without falling prey to his self-destructiveness, a profile that seemed to fit no one in his life.

_Except Lydia, _a voice in his head reminded him, but thinking about her, when she was in Arizona, out of reach, physically, emotionally, and ethically, wasn't something that was good for him.

"Wow, what an incredible revelation! You should get some sort of award for that, Cameron; no one else has ever noticed that I'm wallowing in my own misery."

House didn't know what he would do without the concept of sarcasm. His deflections kept him afloat in a world that he could cope with, a world without his emotions out in the open, ready to be dissected by the nearest person who cared.

"So you're admitting to being depressed?"

He had been formally diagnosed with the depression by Dr. Nolan, the denial that he had carried with him all of his life finally snatched from him.

"I'm not _depressed_. I _was_ depressed, but I'm not now." Medications, they were supposed to be managing his symptoms, but somehow sorrow had crept back in.

"You're just _miserable_."

"Yeah." he answered flatly, staring at the dirt beneath his eyes more intently, as if focusing on it enough would stop the unwanted tears from pooling in his eyes.

"Why?" There were a thousand reasons for his misery; half could be recognized by other people, the other half he kept to himself. That was the way that he kept sane, rational, functional, different pains locked up in different boxes.

"Why would I tell _you_? You'd probably go all lost puppy on me and drag me back to your tortured soul's shelter for some warm cocoa and sympathy. I get enough of the ridiculous caring from Wilson. You don't need to dote on me; in case you haven't noticed, I'm a big boy and I can function on my own." He injected bitterness into his words because it was what he felt, not towards her but towards himself.

"Well, I guess I'll be going then." she replied icily, giving him a cold, hating stare, but she _still_ couldn't pierce him with her gaze, as much as she tried. "Have a nice life House; I'm sure that _I_ will." She made to leave, but House grabbed onto her arm. He didn't want this to be the last interaction that they ever had, knowing that it would just be another guilt-ridden thing that would eat away at him. He wasn't going soft, but he was trying to be human, at least a little bit, something that could get people to believe him a little bit more.

"Don't go." He mumbled, wondering if an apology was a necessary sacrifice, deciding that any chance of talking to someone, of making himself feel worthwhile and not better off dead, lying in a pool of his own vomit, would probably be with Cameron. "I'm, I'm sorry. Just trying to figure things out." Predictably her face softened, and she sat back down, as he turned his head back away from her.

"What's wrong?" she asked delicately, in a voice that pained House. She was going back into her saviour mode, but as much as he hated to be the subject of her caring, he didn't have anyone else to turn to.

Wilson was on the brink of a breakdown, that much House could tell, and so he tried to tiptoe around him, an action that the old House would have scoffed at, but over the months he had learned to value his friendship with the oncologist more than he thought he could have.

No one on his team would care enough to listen to his personal problems, not after they had all seen the wall he had put up around himself.

Cuddy wasn't an option, she _was_ the problem.

"Do you, wanna maybe go back to my place, have a few drinks?" he asked quietly, not looking into her eyes. It was an unusual request, a fact that she pointed out.

She hated him, she had made that clear, and yet, the inevitable _pull_ that drew her towards him acted upon her.

"You're hurting, I'm hurting, we should drown out the pain together. That way if we both get alcohol poisoning, the ambulance only has to go to one place." She knew that there was a reason beyond the logistics, and suspected that he just needed some company. Presumably Wilson wasn't available. She had seen very little of the man lately, and didn't want to ask House about him, in case he was yet another cause of the older man's pain.

"Why would I want to get wasted with the man that ruined my marriage?" she asked, still trying to figure out whether or not she wanted to take him up on his offer. It wasn't something she had ever done before, casual drinks with _him_. The old Cameron would have jumped at the chance, but though her instincts for caring were still intact, her impulses were blunted, and she proceeded with caution in nearly everything that she did.

"I told you, it wasn't _me_ that ruined the marriage, the _marriage_ ruined the marriage. He thought he was ready for this type of commitment to you, you were angry at yourself for being afraid of his proposal and you wanted to prove to yourself that you _could_ involve yourself with him so deeply. You were both deluded into thinking that you could just pretend that your lives were perfect and that everything would turn into a fairytale ending. Well, the original Grimm's tales weren't so pleasant, not until optimistic, sappy-seeking people like you and Chase transformed them into dreams that little children could have, with happy, conflict-free endings. But the base of the idea doesn't change, the people that you and Chase are _won't_ change, you're both damaged and have too many problems to have anything resembling a healthy relationship." He went off on rants like this, wanting to prove to the other people that life wasn't something to be happy about, it was something to respect and fear and cherish, when he was feeling especially bitter.

"Well, that's reassuring." Cameron muttered, looking up into the grey sky, her eyes tearing up again. "So who exactly can I have a healthy, meaningful relationship with, then? If you're right and I only _need_, then who exactly _is_ healthy for me?"

"How am I supposed to know? I'm not exactly the Madame Curie of successful personal relationships. All I know is that if I hadn't pushed him into staying, you two would have been miserable. If you thought that you and Chase could have just moved on after such a large breach of trust, then you're more naïve than he is." Cameron was silent after that, thinking about all the ways in which House was right and silently hating him for it.

He was _always_ right, that was the foundation of all of his interactions with people.

"So, we going back to my place for drinks?" he asked brightly, breaking the silence.

She sat in silence awhile, conflicting impulses and emotions battling for the right to decide her reply, before a quiet "Yeah." escaped her lips and she allowed herself to follow his limping steps to his car.

She would most likely live to regret this, but her life was already full of things that she wanted to forget, and one more day with Dr. Gregory House couldn't possibly do any more damage than had already been done.

**FYI, ****this is NOT a House/Cameron fic, but a friendship fic. With some romance later. But not between House and Cameron. Because they don't belong together. But Cameron is a good character. So I'm using her. **


	2. Chapter 2

Cameron followed House's loping gait to the front door and slipped under his arms as he held the door open for her, a gesture that betrayed his lack of confidence about the situation.

Relatively few remarks were made as he strode over to the kitchen, fetching a bottle of whiskey (Wilson had hidden it well, but boredom had bred strange activities) and two glasses.

He sat down on the dark brown leather couch, and gestured for her awkwardly standing form to sit down next to him.

She complied, nervously sitting a few feet away from him, taking advantage of the spacious piece of furniture.

"You don't need to sit that far from me, I'm not going to bite." _Unless you want me to_, Cameron thought, expecting the comment to rise from his lips, but it never came.

She shifted closer, under the pretense of grabbing her drink, and sat tensely.

"So, what do people usually talk about when drinking with a colleague?" House asked cheerfully, breaking the silence. She took a sip of her drink, wincing as the liquor slid down her throat.

"I don't know." she half-muttered, half-choked.

'Don't do much of the hard drinking?" House asked, picking up on her discomfort at consuming the alcohol. "More of a wine person?"

"Yeah." she replied, not wanting to go into the detail of the last time she had consumed a large amount of hard alcohol, wincing at the memory of the solid bathroom floor in the bar and the ear-splitting knocks she had endured before the bartender had unlocked the door and dragged her body out of there.

It had been one week after her husband had died.

House took a large gulp of his drink, and leaned back against the couch, looking up at the ceiling.

Cameron remained in her position, sitting forward and keeping her legs firmly together.

"Geez, Cameron, I invite you to my home and you can't even relax? Have more booze; it'll make you feel better." Cameron sighed and turned around. Now was as good a time as ever.

"Why did you invite me here, House?" she asked, looking into his eyes. "Is it because you thought I would be fun drunk? Or maybe you thought I would spill something about Chase and you could blackmail him into doing your dirty work for the rest of your life." Of course, she assumed the worst about him, but he couldn't admit to her how much that hurt him, not yet, not when he still had the façade to keep up.

"If I wanted someone who was fun drunk, I would have gotten Wilson to come home early. Chase already does all my surgeries for me, so blackmail wouldn't do much, although it might get him to do some of my clinic hours." he replied, not giving her an answer.

"So I'm here because…?"

"I…I wanted to talk to someone." House said quietly, looking away from her, ashamed.

That was an answer that Cameron hadn't been expecting.

"Don't you have a therapist for that?" From what she had heard, House's relationship with his shrink had actually helped him quite a bit.

"I… already talked to Nolan. He… said that I should try…" House trailed off and looked at Cameron, looking like a lost little boy, reminding her of a patient she had seen in the ER what seemed like an eternity ago. "Letting her go." he finished, talking another long drink of his whiskey.

Her heart ached for him at that moment, but she also felt a strange sense of pride.

He had finally admitted to her that he was in pain, that he was human, and that he wanted something that he couldn't have.

He had shown his vulnerability, if not completely willingly then at least without his usual caution in dealing with the irrational and emotional.

Despite this, though, she had no idea what to say to him.

She wasn't practiced in the art of comforting the uncomfortable, despite her best efforts to the contrary.

"But you don't want to…" she said slowly, testing the waters.

"Of course I don't want to," he said bitterly, smiling grimly. "But what choice do I have? She doesn't feel the same way, at least not about me. I'm sure you've seen her boyfriend around the hospital." he finished nastily, displaying his obvious loathing for the man.

Cameron nodded slowly, chancing a glace back up at her former boss, who had refilled his glass.

Hers remained on the coffee table, only missing a few mouthfuls of whiskey.

"Well, then you'll know how _happy_ they are together. I shouldn't ruin that." His voice betrayed the sadness he felt, and she found herself touching his forearm with her hand in comfort, but he just shrugged it off.

"I shouldn't be burdening you with this." he muttered, taking another drink. She looked at him, concerned, knowing that at this rate, he would be on the floor in a pile of his own vomit before nightfall.

"Should you be drinking that much?" she asked weakly, bracing herself for his response. It never came though, and they sat in silence together, as he swirled the amber liquid around the crystal glass.

"I was an alcoholic." House finally said, breaking the silence.

"I would come home from work and drink until I passed out. Trivial things would trigger it. A disappointed look from Wilson, things that patients said, things that I saw in the clinic, sometimes patients dying, there was never a _rational_ reason. I… pretended that the things that people said to me didn't matter. I would brush them off and go on like I always did, but I was… depressed. The Vicodin, it helped with the pain, and the alcohol blurred everything else out, but sometimes it wasn't enough. Sometimes I would wonder what the hell I was doing, still alive, when I should have died years ago. I would try and convince myself that I knew the truth and that was all that mattered, but it wasn't enough. Nothing would ever _be_ enough. _I_ would never be enough, for anyone."

He finished his speech with a self-conscious mumble, immediately wishing that he could just suck the words he had spoken back into his mouth.

Undoubtedly she would spout some sort of nonsense about all over the people he cures every year, about the scads of people who looked up to him, yeah, he had heard that all before. It never made a difference.

"House, you save hundreds of lives, you-" Cameron told him, trying, just as he had predicted, to let him know _why _he was still worth it, even if he didn't feel like he was, but he cut her off.

"That's just my job. If I didn't have my job, I wouldn't be anything…" He trailed off and looked back at his feet, and she knew what he was thinking about.

He was thinking about a time, not so long ago, when he hadn't been anything at all, according to _his_ definition of worthiness, when he didn't have his job, or even his _rational mind. _

She was sure that he was going back to everything he had been through, an experience that she knew next to nothing about.

Her mind burned with curiousity about his stay at Mayfield, but she didn't want to close him up by pushing him too far, and so she remained quiet again.

He broke the silence once more. "I was scared that I was never going to get out of there, at one point." he started quietly, still not looking at her.

"I had tried to cheat, to scam my way out, after I had detoxed. He… he made me stay, even though I wasn't hallucinating anymore, because I thought that I could get better. I'm… happy that he did that. I don't know where I would be if he hadn't. Probably passed out on a street corner, looking for a heroin fix."

He had meant to make that last part a joke, to lighten the somber mood that he had put the room into, but there was too much truth in the statement.

Had he not gotten better, had he not realized that happiness could be achieved, he would still be wallowing in his misery, nothing to his name but a bottle of bourbon and a reputation long gone because of what he had become.

But wasn't he _wallowing in his misery_ now?

Weren't the whiskey, and the company, there because he didn't know the mature, adult thing to do about his problem?

But Cuddy was much more than just a problem; she was what was holding him back from contentment, from a life that didn't make him want to join his former employees in the afterlife.

He _was_ happier than he had been before Mayfield, he knew that, and that was what kept him going, what let him try to improve himself and his life.

He just needed to get out of the hole he had fallen into.

He realized that Cameron hadn't said much since he had started talking.

She had taken to staring at the fireplace, as attentively as though there were flames dancing in it.

"Cameron." he said, softly, trying to get her attention, but she was obviously deep in thought. "Cameron!"

She turned around abruptly at the sound of him shouting, her mouth open in surprise.

"Are you… are you okay?" he mumbled, not knowing what he was supposed to do with a woman who was empty and hurting and confused.

"Yeah, I'm, I'm fine." she answered quickly, looking away. "Just thinking…"

"About what?" He hoped she hadn't paid too much attention to his rants about his life, hoped she wouldn't try to talk to him about his feelings, or what he needed to do to move on, because he didn't wanted another therapist, he had just wanted someone who would listen without passing judgment.

"About Chase…" She adopted a wistful, mournful look, but House didn't feel sorry for her, he didn't regret what had happened between his two former employees.  
He did, however, feel a strange need to make her stop feeling sorry for herself.

"Are you… going to be okay?" he asked, hoping that if she were to have an emotional breakdown that she would at least have the decency to let him know so he could get his ass out of the room and Jimmy Wilson on the phone.

"I… don't know." she replied, and he cursed inwardly, wondering if the price to pay for a one-sided conversation about his personal issues was enduring her tirades on Robert Chase.

"Are you ever going to know?" he asked, rather more nastily than he had intended, and she whipped her head around to look at him, all traces of sadness replaced with anger.

"How the hell am _I_ supposed to know, House? You don't just _get over _a divorce, you know, although how you ever _would _know is beyond me, because I'm sure you're _never _going to know; no woman in her right mind would _ever_ consider anything _remotely _resembling marriage with you, because you're so damn closed-off and acerbic that getting anywhere near whatever you have for a heart just screws you up permanently, to the point that you're sitting alone in your room, listening to Shania Twain and screaming your heart out to the pouring rain as your life just floats on past you."

She finished her rant with a large huff of breath and an even larger gulp of whiskey, tears streaming down her face from the burning sensation in her throat and the burning sensation in her chest.

"Well, you seem to be awfully descriptive of such a situation to not-"

"To not what, House? To not have been there before? Fine, that's what I did, after our 'date', I went home and I sobbed for hours. You broke my heart that night, my stupid, naïve, over-eager heart. The same heart that took Chase in, the same heart that eventually gave in to his 'It's Tuesday' routine and his unhappiness at only having one drawer, the same heart that found the engagement ring in his socks and didn't know what to do about it, the same heart that married him, the same heart that got broken when it found out about the _thing_ that he was hiding from me. You and Foreman knew about it, and yet, _nothing_! So forgive me if I'm not over it, if a little tiny part isn't even over you, because that same heart saw its husband die. So don't you talk to me about broken hearts, or ordeals, because I know what it's _like_. I know what its like to be in love with someone and not know what to do about the inevitable crash that comes later. "

He really had nothing to say to that.

He had no desire to stir her up again by pointing out that she had just admitted to everything he had ever said about her.

"Are you going to say something sarcastic, or are going just going to stare at me like I've grown a set of wings?" He blinked at her question, then responded.

"No, I thought staring at you would give me a better chance of getting into your pants." House replied sarcastically, sighing when she continued to attempt to pierce him with her glare.

"You going to say anything else, or are you done pouring your heart out for the day? Is it _my_ turn now?"

"You've already done enough heart-pouring, House."

"Yeah, well, that was my old limit. I grew three heart sizes more while in the mental ward, so I have a lot more to rant about."

"Yeah? What more do you have to say, House? You've already _screamed _to Cuddy that you love her, you've already told me about your alcoholism and your rehab. What else is there to say? Going to talk about your _abusive childhood_ or your agony over Wilson's coming _mental breakdown_?"

The last two she had said in sarcasm, but one look into House's darkening blue eyes told her the truth. She gasped, struggling for apologies.

"House, I'm sorry, I meant it as-I didn't think-" Her platitudes died in her throat as she saw the dangerous look on his face, his features shifting from the warning signs to full-blown anguish.

"You're right, you DIDN'T think! Ever wonder what exactly screwed me up so bad? Ever wonder if there was ever MORE to my pain, more to my depression, more to my understanding of just how FUCKED UP the world is?"

Her eyes widened, and filled with tears, but he disregarded them, needing to keep going, not knowing how to end the stream of thoughts that seemed to have simply burst from his mouth, words flowing from his lips, unstoppable, the dam finally broken.

"I've _been_ there, Cameron. I've been there, when an officer is whipped for his disobedience, I've been there, when a good wife is slapped because of her screw-ups, I've been there, when an innocent boy-"

And at this point, tears started flowing freely out of his heavy eyes, onto his weathered face and onto the couch-

"When an innocent boy has to sit in an ice bath, because he wouldn't listen to his father, because he thought that he knew everything and that this one time, just one more time, his father was wrong."

His voice was choked, and while he could hardly get the words out, she heard every single one of them, loud and clear, and never before had she ever felt so helpless.

" I've survived these things, and I _know_ that they live with you forever, and that _no_ amount of therapy will ever make them seem better than they were. So yeah, maybe I WILL go on about my childhood, and how it felt to never be in the same place long enough to a make real friend, and while I'm at it, maybe I _will_ tell you about how Wilson's losing his mind and how I can't stop thinking about how I should have been there for him, a little bit, because he IS going to have a breakdown, and I'm going to _have to_ be there for him now. But you never _thought_ about those things, did you, Cameron, because it NEVER occurred to you that maybe I had problems behind my addictions, and that yeah, maybe I _am_ going to be facing bigger things that Cuddy and some guy that I can't get rid of."

At the end of his speech, his eyes were red, his breath was shaky, and his face was wet, wetter than it had been in a long time, covered in tears that had finally been released after weeks of holding them in. The last time he had cried had been when he had seen _them_ walk off together, and he had promised himself that he wouldn't cry anymore, that he would throw himself into his work and pretend that he didn't need her affections.

"House…"

He said nothing at that, but allowed himself to be taken in by her arms, allowed himself to continue his sobbing, against her chest, allowed himself to let loose everything he had ever felt, allowed himself to not be who the rest of the world saw for a few heartbreaking minutes.

"I don't, I don't…I don't know what to do anymore…"

"Shhhhhh…. Everything's going to be just fine…" She said these words knowing that they weren't true, that they likely would never be true, for anyone.

"No… no it's not, I can't do anything about it, he's, he's going to have a breakdown and I'm not going to be able to help him…"

"Shhhhh… Yes you are, House, you can help him. You're his best friend, he'll listen to you."

"He never listens to me; he just assumes that I'm being mocking and deflective. I don't know how to help… I can't help…."

"Yes you _can_, House, you've been through it before. You got help for yourself, you can help Wilson." At this point she was spouting nonsense; she had no idea what was going on with Wilson and was clutching at straws. But some of it seemed to have an affect on House, who was removing himself from her arms, after a brief stay that seemed to have calmed him down.

"I'm sorry about th-"

"Shhhh…" Cameron said, once again, and it seemed to shut him up, at least for the time being. She didn't want to hear him apologize for showing his human side, that wasn't something to feel guilt over.

"Bet you didn't expect to be…comforting me." House said, in between wobbly, deep breaths. "Bet you thought _you_ would be… crying into _my_ arms and I'd… be making it all better. But… nothing's going to be all better. Nothing's going to turn out… right."

"Yes it will, House. _Something's_ going to turn out right. You'll, you'll get her eventually, I know you will."

"Yeah?" he replied with shaky laughter. "And what if I can't wait? What if…I can't live like this, knowing…that she's with someone else."

"House, you've been through worse. Your life is good now, you're off Vicodin, you're starting to have meaningful relationships with people, that's a huge step for you! You can't give up now, you're finally improving!" At least, that was what she had wanted to believe. But his ridiculously manipulative behaviour during their last case had convinced her otherwise, her opinion of him sinking lower still.

But she still had _hope_, her stubbornly _good_ mind refused to give _that_ up.

Her hopeful look almost made him turn away, but he couldn't, her eyes were too earnest and bright.

"Then why do I still feel like I'm trapped? Why do I come home and wonder if what I've accomplished is enough to keep me motivated to live?" She didn't have an answer for that, and he didn't expect her to.

His pain shouldn't give him an excuse to destroy everything he touched, and yet, his angst managed to wrestle sympathy from her, and she gave him platitudes, reassurances, encouragements.

"House. You're a good person, beneath all of your deflection and arrogance and pain. Don't let one woman make you think otherwise." When the words left her mouth, she realized her hypocrisy, that her placating statement had voided all the arguments she had given him the night she left the job, but he didn't notice the contradiction; in his hurt, he had ignored all else.

"What if that's what I tell _myself_? Everyday, when I see what I've become." She looked into his miserable blue eyes, and couldn't help the look of pity that escaped from her own pair. "Good God, that sounded cliché." he added in afterthought, and looked away.

"House…" Her whining voice cut through his misery like a knife, and he snapped.

"What?" he barked at her, and she shrunk away in alarm. "It's OKAY to be miserable; it's okay to feel like complete crap 'cause I can't even get the one woman that I have a chance in hell of working out with to see that I _actually_ love her? It's NORMAL, to come home, night after night, and wonder just how fast the end is coming, to wonder when I'M going to have to be the caretaker and when Wilson's going to be the one who's needy? Is it nothing to be ASHAMED about, preferring the fantasy to reality, wondering what the worst thing would have been if I had just continued on in my delusion?" His eyes were frightening, and she found herself unable to look away.

I can't even look myself in the mirror, not without wondering where the hell all the lines in my face came from; how all the time went by without me noticing it; when the time will come when I just give up and let myself go; what the final straw will be; who will find me on the floor in my office, gun in my hand, hole in my head. You can't _tell_ me that it's OKAY to feel these things, because it's not! I'm a miserable bastard, and no one deserves the burden of having to look after me. You shouldn't even be here!" He finished his rant with a heavy note of bitterness, and Cameron took his face in her hands, heart broken over everything that he felt.

"You are NOT worthless, you are NOT just a miserable bastard, you are an amazing, complicated, terrible, wonderful person. There _are_ people who care about you; there _are _people who want you to be happy!"

"Yeah? Like who?" he asked quietly, and she moved his face so that she was looking directly into his eyes, their noses almost touching, his heavy, ragged breaths blowing into her face, coming in contact with the tears that still covered her face., chilling her, but not as much as his words had.

"Wilson does. Chase does. I know that Taub does, even if he seems just as miserable as you. Thirteen does. Hell, I'm sure that even _Foreman_ does." House scoffed at that, but didn't turn his head away. She paused before speaking, disappointed in the fact that the words she was about to speak were still true. "_I_ care about you. And I _know_ that even if she doesn't show it, Cuddy cares about you a_ lot_, and that's why she hid her relationship from you, not because she didn't want you barging in on her dates, or mocking her with Wilson, but because she didn't want to hurt you. But she didn't realize that the act of hiding it from you was the worst thing that she could have done. Because even though _you_ try to hide it, being_ trusted_ is something very important to you. And knowing that she doesn't think that she can rely on you to be the adult and not screw things up hurts you more than she'll ever know." House blinked away rebellious tears and willed himself not to cry again.

Cameron had spoken truths more powerful than he had ever thought her capable of, and for that he was proud of the woman she had become.

"Why… why do you care about me so much?" Again, his face resembled the face of the little boy in the ER, just as reluctant to believe what she said, just as afraid of bad news, just as closed off and yet ashamedly hopeful.

"Because-" She wondered if she was really going to do it, to say something that she was sure he hadn't heard in years, and decided that tonight, her last night, was the night for him to hear it. "Because, I love you." She gave a sad smile, and his eyes widened in surprise, his mouth opening and words stopping in his throat.

"Wha-….why…? What have I ever done to get your _love_? I understand that in your _young naivety_, you fell for the bad boy, but now? I've been nothing short of horrible to you; you have no business _loving_ me. You should have given up on that years ago; loving me is something that only helpless, ignorant people do." He was looking at her incredulously, almost disappointed, and she supposed that disappointment was a valid reaction; after all, she had gotten married and was supposed to be over him. But what Gregory House didn't realize was that there were different kinds of love, and the feelings she felt toward him were the sort of feelings that Wilson felt, caring, compassion, a need to keep him from harming himself in his endless quests for truth.

She relinquished his face from her grasp, and backed away from him.

"Yeah? Well maybe I AM helpless and ignorant! Or maybe, love is something that just happens, House, something that cannot be rationalized away! You should know that, you're in love with your god-damnned boss!" This wasn't how he was supposed to react; he was supposed be happy that at least _someone _loved and cared for him.

But no, he had to ruin that by insulting her; well maybe he was right, maybe she was still a confused little girl who had to make herself useful by fixing people.

"Are you _jealous_, Cameron? Now that you've told me that you're in love with me, I'm supposed to forget about Cuddy and run away with you?"

She seethed in anger, wondering for the umpteenth time why she bothered trying to reason with the man.

"I am NOT 'in love' with you, not anymore! I _love_ you, we're FRIENDS, at least I thought we were! All romantic feelings died out YEARS ago, House! I don't want to BE with you, I want to help you, I want to-"

"Fix me?" He regarded her darkly, and saw the momentary flash of fear in her eyes.

He looked at her in resentment, frustrated at how much she _hadn't_ changed. "Is that what this is all about, is that why you're here, you wanted one last chance to FIX me? Because that's NOT why I asked you to come. I wanted someone to talk to that wouldn't judge me, or try to talk me out of anything. But if you just want to patch up all of the holes in my life, then you can just leave. I don't need another therapist; I need advice that doesn't include undeserved praise or glossed-over accounts of everything that's ever happened to me."

She wasn't the right person for the cold, hard, uncensored facts, but she would try, oh, she would try. Anger was on her side, and everything that she had ever wanted to say to him, everything that she had ever thought would convince him to change, had she had the guts to say it, came spilling out of her lips.

"You want the TRUTH, House? Is _that_ what you want? Because I can tell you the truth, don't you worry. I was only trying to be sensitive on account of you _crying_ earlier, but if you want the hard-as-nails version, here it is. Your life sucks; you're a miserable old man who's got nothing going for him except his intelligence, something that the majority of the population can't care about. You go home to Wilson every night, and that's an unhealthy enough relationship, but now you're trying to go after your boss, and there's not a rat's ass chance in hell that she'll _ever_ go for YOU, because she has a nice stable boyfriend and you're nothing but a bad risk, a liability, an inevitable _failure_." Her voice shook, but she kept going.

"You're going to die alone, overdosed on some inane drug that you found to block out the pain, pain that's only been intensified by all of the emotions that you've been denying. Wilson, your only friend, will have moved on and left you by then, and some new, just as smart but not as screwed up doctor will have taken _your place_. That's where I see your life going, House, if you keep up this self-hate and destruction. You really want that, or are you going to stop treating people like crap? When you got out of Mayfield, I had thought that MAYBE you had _finally_ changed for the better. I guess it turned out to be yet another of my naïve hopes."

"Is that really what you believe?" House challenged, knowing that she was lying, that she still believed in the good in him, that she still believed he could overcome his demons and become the person that she had seen in him, all those years ago.

She faltered under his harsh gaze and looked away.

"Yes." She could feel him staring a hole into the back of her head. "No," she said softly, resignedly. "But it's what YOU believe. And I'd do anything, ANYTHING, to change that."

"Because you love me?" he said mockingly, bitterly, hopelessly, knowing that letting her into his emotional fortress would be strategic suicide.  
"Because I _care_ about you. Love is just another word to describe not wanting to let you go." Her eyes were sincere, and he didn't doubt that this _was _what she believed to be the truth.

"You _should_ let me go." he muttered, looking away, but she took his face in her hands once again and forced their eyes together.

"Sometimes you CAN'T. Sometimes someone is just such a _huge_ part of your life that you CAN'T separate from them, as much as you need to. House, I'm LEAVING tomorrow, but you're ALWAYS going to stick with me, no matter what happens. You can't _force_ everyone to just stop _caring_ about you because it's not _good_ for them. It's rare that we _ever_ do anything that's good for us."

House remained silent after that, but his eyes were quietly pleading with hers, an unspoken cry for acceptance and trust.

"No one _means_ to hurt you, House. They just do."

He didn't have anything to say to her after that.

Because he was sure that there were dozens, if not hundreds, of people who wanted to hurt him.

He though back to the man who had shot him, to Tritter, to all of his enemies back in university.

Surely those people felt no compassion towards him; surely they had meant all of the harm that had come to him.

"Nobody who CARES about you _wants_ to hurt you." Cameron said, noticing his silence and faraway look. "Those are the people that matter, anyone who doesn't care about you isn't worth your time."

He remained silent, looking down at the space between their laps, and for the first time since they had gotten into their arguments, she noticed the awkwardness of the situation.

His face was still in her hands, and their noses were almost touching again, but there was no tension, only a sense that she needed to do something about the pain emanating from him, that she needed to stop the pain for at least a little while, be his Vicodin.

And so she crossed the minute distance that was still between them, and kissed his lips softly.

He didn't do anything, didn't even look up, and that angered her; she kissed him again, longer, more tender, full of meaning; she thought he was worth something, she wasn't going to do one thing and say another.

He closed his eyes and allowed her lips to chase his own; he moved with her mouth and suddenly lost himself in the emotion of the moment; he kissed her as if she would float away at the slightest show of passion, but he needn't have worried about that, because there _was_ no passion between them, only a mutual need to feel wanted and needed and not in the way.

House kissed her to know that he could; Cameron kissed him to know that she wasn't too soft not to.

His hands traveled down to her waist and she leaned over him, her blond hair cascading down as House lowered himself down onto the couch, his hands still supporting her body above his own frame.

Their mouths never mingled enough to not be able to be separated a second later, and his hands never drifted southward, keeping their grip around her waist.

But their feather light, whispering kisses could only go on for so long, and soon Cameron was delicately tugging at the bottom of his t-shirt, indicating that she wanted it off, that whatever they were doing, the next step was necessary.

He backed off slightly, looking into her eyes.

"Bedroom?" he asked quietly, full of hesitation and insecurity, and she nodded.

They got off of the couch, its pillows now disturbed, and she followed his loping form down the hall and into his bedroom.


	3. Chapter 3

**Still not Hameron.**

**Enjoy!**

Wilson entered the apartment with a scowl on his face and anger in his heart.

House had really screwed up this time.

From what he had heard from the team and the hospital gossip network, House had shouted to Cuddy (and unintentionally, to all the personnel eagerly eavesdropping outside of her office), that he loved and if she couldn't deal with that, then there was nothing more to say, before briefly checking in with his team and storming out of the building.

It had been seven hours since House had last been seen in the hospital, and Wilson was finally getting home after completing a batch of paperwork that seemed to have gone on for miles.

He opened the front door, sincerely hoping that his best friend was somewhere in the apartment and NOT passed out in a bar somewhere.

He didn't hear the television on, which was a bad sign.

Either he was sleeping (unlikely for him at this early in the evening), 'picking his bellybutton lint' (Wilson still shuddered at the memory), passed out IN the apartment, or off god-knows-where.

No coats were missing in the well organized closet, and in this weather, it was unlikely that House would go out only in his sports jacket, knowing what the cold would do to his leg.

Wilson moved into the living room, and noticed an open bottle of whiskey (hadn't he hidden that?), as well as an unusual number of half-filled glasses sitting on the coffee table.

The pillows were strewn around their new couch, and for the first time Wilson noticed what he knew to be House's sports jacket lying on the floor.

He could put two and two together, and not for the first time since House had moved in with him, he found himself disappointed in the older man.

The possible presence of two additional people in his home set off warning bell in his head, but he continued his journey to the bedrooms.

He walked down the halls, trying to pick up on any sounds that would tell him what his best friend was up to, but he heard nothing.

He tripped on an article of clothing, and upon picking it up, he felt a strange sense of foreboding, an apprehension that he couldn't quite place.

It was a light pink blouse, and he couldn't help but think in the back of his mind that he had seen it before somewhere. (Probably during his wistful trip to the Wal-Mart, his unabated grief telling him to go into the women's department to find that _soap_ that Amber had liked to use).

House had hookers over all the time, at least according to the man himself, why should this one cause Wilson's stomach to drop?

Perhaps because this was the first time he had heard of such frowned-upon activities since House had returned from Mayfield.

Then again, Wilson was ever doubtful of the extent that House had really changed, so he supposed that this was no surprise, House had, after all, been feeling exceedingly lonely lately, and with his own problems, he had been unable to help him.

Ignoring his now pounding heart, he proceeded to the door of House's bedroom (a hooker in Amber's _shrine_, really?), hesitating for a second before carefully turning the doorknob.

He needed to know if his friend was okay, and the amount of embarrassment he would have to endure upon discovering the older man in a compromising position would have to be worth it.

The door swung open carefully at his hands, quietly enough to not disturb anyone who might be lurking inside.

Upon entering the room, it all _hit_ him.

If House had had a hooker over, he would have been hearing sounds of sex, not silence.

If House had had a hooker over, she would have left upon completion of her task, not leaving behind important articles of clothing like blouses.

If House had had a hooker over, she would not have remained in his bed, wrapped around his naked frame in slumber, his arms holding onto her possessively.

If House had had a hooker over, Allison Cameron would not have been in his bed.

Wilson made a sound halfway between a gasp and a squeal, and that was what woke the unexpected lovers.

House opened his eyes and blinked twice, trying to decide if the image of his best friend standing in his doorway with a look of utter disbelief on his face was real or not.

Remembering what had happened a few hours ago between him and the woman currently curled up naked against his equally nude body, he decided that Wilson's shell-shocked expression was entirely appropriate for the situation at hand.

Now, if only he knew the correct course of action for being discovered by your best friend in bed with a former employee.

He decided that his usual annoyed, upset at getting his fun spoiled expression would work.

He slipped in onto his face, glaring at the oncologist for ruining what had been a peaceful, unexpected sleep.

"Wilson!" he said angrily, breaking his friend out of his spell. "You IDIOT, what are you doing here? Did I forget to put the stethoscope on the door again?"

"Stetho- Stethoscope? Oh, god, House, what are you doing with CAMERON?"

His friend had turned bright red, and had taken to half covering his face with his hands.

"Well, as may have been made obvious by our position and state of undress, we had _sex_."

By this time, Cameron had woken up and was looking at Wilson with wide embarrassed eyes.

"I know that- _House_! She's, she's, she's-"

"What, needy? Upset that you didn't get to her in time to take care of all of her little problems?"

"But, but, but how-?"

We met outside, after my disastrous attempt at making Cuddy fall head over heels for me, which I'm SURE you've heard about by now, we came back her for drinks, go to talking, one thing led to another…" House was reminded, with a pang, of the conversation he had had at the '80s party with Cuddy, and just how _wrong_ everything had turned out. "But I'm sure you know how THAT part goes, JIMMY. You've probably perfected your 'Knight in Shining Trojan" routine over the years."

"Perfect, you're deflecting by picking on _my_ relationship habits. What the HELL were you thinking House? Chase is going to kill you!"

"Oh would you SHUT UP, Wilson?" An unexpected outburst came from Cameron, catching Wilson off guard. "He doesn't need you to babysit him anymore; he can take care of himself. You think HE was the one to make the first move?"

"It's true." House added, refusing to break under Wilson's furious stare. "SHE jumped ME."

"I don't _care_ who jumped who! You guys had SEX, that's, that's-"

"Nothing significant in any way?" House finished, raising his eyebrows. Wilson sputtered for a few more seconds before heaving a huge sigh of defeat.

"But, but what about Chase?" he asked weakly, looking from House to Cameron, who had untangled herself from her bed partner and covered herself up with a sheet.

"Is Chase _going_ to find out?" House asked testily, glaring at Wilson. "I'm not going to tell him, Cameron's leaving in twelve hours, and YOU'RE not going to tell him, if you know what's good for you."

"But, but…" Wilson tried again pathetically.

"But nothing. It was just SEX."

"There's no such thing as 'just sex'" Wilson said doubtfully, and House groaned. Was he _trying_ to make things more complicated than they were?

"Maybe not for you, but unlike your past affairs, Cameron is leaving and I'm never going to see her again. Now if you don't mind…" Wilson got the message, loud and clear, and he stepped out of the room with his hands, up, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now.

His friend had always been one to take stupid risks for personal gain, but sleeping with Allison Cameron was an act of undeniable selfishness.

He had obviously just wanted her to forget about the fiasco with Cuddy, but there were hookers for that.

Wilson had never before wished his friend had been with a prostitute, but he wished it now.

How _stupid_ could House have been?

How much had he _really_ changed, what with his shameless manipulation of the Chase and Cameron's marriage, as well as the game he had played with Thirteen and Taub?

It was his fault, he was sure, he should have been paying even more attention to the man, not blubbering to his dead girlfriend about the girl in the coffee shop with the same scarf as her.

He should have known that Cuddy had been dating, he should have asked her about it before he had sent House swooning after her.

Anything that had happened to the man was Wilson's fault, and Wilson's fault alone.

He really was a failure.

He couldn't save patients, he couldn't save his best friend from himself.

*****

Dr. Lisa Cuddy had come to the apartment for one reason, and one reason only: to see if House was still alive.

She hadn't seen him in over twelve hours, and it was now almost midnight.

Wilson hadn't told her anything, in fact, she hadn't heard anything from him either, but _he_ wasn't at risk for drug overdose or suicide like her most eccentric employee was.

The lights were on, which was a good sign.

If the lights were on, there could be people inside, perhaps enjoying a glass of wine, or eating pizza, or playing _Twister_.

She allowed herself a brief chuckle at the thought of cripple-thighed House trying to contort himself on a plastic mat with his best friend, before stepping out of her car and walking over to the door.

She decided against the shiny new doorbell, the act of knocking seeming more familiar, more like the things that she and he had done in the past, before their lives had taken a downhill spill and gotten so messed up that late-night visits simply weren't an option.

The loudness of her determined, concerned-despite-recent-events fists echoed in her head, for the respectable street was silent in the midnight glow, and there was no room in her mind for further thoughts on Gregory House.

She was well aware that she had hurt him, with her silence and iciness at his confession, but what else could she have done?

Admitted to the same feelings?

Thrown herself into his arms?

Yelled at him for being so ridiculously confusing about the whole matter?

Told him lies about the impossibility of their future together? (No, it _was_ impossible, she had to keep telling herself that).

She knew that he had been telling the truth, there was no doubt about that.

But it was the _reason_ behind his admission that had scared her, that he was so desperate for something from her, for some sort of acknowledgment of their mutual love, that he could, in fact, say something like that without any deflections.

His feelings scared her; her feelings for him scared her even more.

It was hard, she reasoned, to find a good man for a single mother, and it was stupid to give up a good thing like Lucas because House had decided that he really _didn't_ like sharing his toys.

He had, in fact, made it quite clear that he didn't want her, not really, that she was just another plaything for him, that her feelings were as much a puzzle as any medical mystery she had trusted to him.

At least, that was the message he had sent when he had grabbed her breast, after she had so thoughtlessly and naively tried to get him to go for her.

And then, there was Mayfield.

Before that, there were his hallucinations, and the _night _that he had imagined with her.

After, months of quiet, and whispered conversations between the nurses and the interns about _where exactly is he_, and _has he really lost it and gotten himself institutionalized_, and her favourite, _well it's a damn good thing that they had never actually slept together_.

Billions of different thoughts had gone through her head, all conflicting, all debating whether or not all of the words she had spoken still applied, whether or not his delusions had voided the statements about their personal relationship.

Some small part of her wanted him in her bed every morning, and another small part wanted to throw him in the incinerator and be done with all of his bullshit.

And then, he goes and tries to pursue her!

They were both foolish when their love was in full swing, her with the office thing, him with his blatant flirtations and attempts at those _moments, _the moments that slowly inched their relationship towards that _line_, far off in the distance but still in reach.

And inevitably, the average of all of her musings about the man with the cane had risen to the forefront of her mind, so that no words were able to escape her mouth when House answered her tentative knocks.

He looked good, no, for the first time since he had discovered the truth about her personal life, he looked happy.

That, for some unexplainable reason, made her uneasy.

"Hello, Cuddy, what brings you here at _this_ hour?" His voice, so sickly sweet and artificially cheery, had further sedated her thoughts, to the point that any dialogue that tried to force its way out of her lightly lipsticked lips was caught in a tangle of molasses syllables.

But her mouth wasn't hanging open, she wasn't giving off the deer in headlights vibe, and that was the important part.

Eventually, she was able to string a few words together, and so the response, "Generally the standard for missing persons is twenty-four hours, but twelve hours seemed like an appropriate time to come looking for you" fell out of her mouth, and even in her half-dazed, unsure of just what she was doing state, the phrase didn't make as much sense as it should have.

"Come in." he said, and that should have been her warning sign, because House in his right House mind wouldn't have asked her to do so in such a casual manner, as if she hadn't just crushed his uncrushable heart that day, as if she came over in the middle of the night for tea and crumpets all of the time, as if he were a normal human being who entertained guests in a civil manner rather frequently.

And as she stepped into the dining room, the reason for his civility became apparent.

The blush that formed on Allison Cameron's face was out of place, because if they had just been sharing a late night meal, the embarrassment at seeing the woman that her host loved wouldn't have been there.

She knew, she could see it in the cruel twinkle in his eyes, and that was when the green-eyed monster took over her head, and she glared at him in disappointment.

"Yes, Cuddy, to answer your unspoken question, we had _sex_." The words he had spoken threw an unexpected blow at her chest, and it landed, that was for sure, the wind was knocked out of her lungs as surely as if he had thrown her small frame against the wall.

Cameron's face turned a further, truer shade of red, but Cuddy felt no pity for the girl, not when she knew from the atmosphere in the room that the encounter had been his former employee's initiative.

"Are you hungry?" His voice, so comforting and yet so _infuriating_, cut through her thoughts like a razor blade through soap, and she found herself nodding.

It made sense, her desire for food, seeing as she hadn't eaten anything since lunch, and her body somehow sat itself down; she had the distinct impression of an out of body experience, for surely there was no way she could command her raging thoughts and her awkward physicality at the same time.

House had disappeared into the kitchen; the sound of scraping bowls and cutlery and the hum of the microwave could be heard, even through the thick, tense silence.

Somehow, her eyes had moved themselves to meet Cameron's, and the younger woman regarded her cautiously, as though Cuddy still had some sort of power over her.

She supposed it was good, to have the position of authority, and she was brought back to a time, months ago, when she had asked the former member of House's team to take over her job as she cared for Rachael.

Even then, she had been incompetent, fumbling, afraid of the word no, of displeasing House, of making herself into an inhibitor.

"Shrimp Scampi." House said, as he placed the plate of food down in front of her on the mahogany table. "Actually, if you translate it, it's "Shrimp Shrimp", but you get the idea. Real genious who decided to put that one on Italian menus, if you ask me-"

"House." she interrupted, stopping what was obviously her first glimpse past his façade, into his nervousness. "It's fine. This looks delicious." And in fact, it did.

It was certainly the most appetizing looking Shrimp Scampi she had ever encountered.

One bite told her that it was, by far, the best thing she had ever tasted.

And it saddened her more than she would ever admit to anyone to know that he had cooked it for Cameron.

"Oh my god…." she moaned, involuntarily, at the taste of the succulent shrimp and tender homemade pasta in her mouth.

"That's what she said." House replied, and Cameron instantly switched back to bright red and looked down. It didn't take long for House to realize the double meaning behind what he had just said, and he cleared his throat, trying, sincerely, to get rid of the awkwardness that had fallen over the group.

"So… how's the hospital?" Cameron asked quietly, looking up at Cuddy then looking away just as quickly.

"Huh? Oh, it's fine. Just burst a pipe down in the morgue, but other than that…" Cuddy mentally slapped herself. Nothing was the matter, except a certain recently re-certified diagnostician had disappeared early in the day, fueling even more rumours. Not to mention their disaster of an argument, an argument that had unfortunately gone around the hospital and back a couple thousand times since the people in the clinic had first heard his confession.

"Oh… uh, good…" Their conversation continued on in that fashion for all of two minutes, before the two doctors lapsed into silence, House still in the kitchen, doing, of all things, the dishes.

"House?" Cuddy dared to ask, after the silence had once again become stifling. "Where's Wilson?" He walked out of the kitchen at that, wearing a look of concern.

"Didn't he go back to the hospital?" he asked, seemingly confused.

'No, it was almost nine when he left."

"Shit." House muttered, and she looked up at him sharply.

"What?"

"Well, he's not here, and he's not at the hospital, so obviously, he's passed out somewhere… shit…" Cuddy was confused. Since when was House so concerned about Wilson's wellbeing? Yes, lately the oncologist had been a little bit off, but surely that was nothing serious, no reason for alarm.

"He found me in bed with Cameron earlier tonight." he said, half to her, half to himself. "Not doing anything, mind you, just sleeping…" She felt another pang of jealously at that; since when had House been a cuddler? "He must have thought that I was just screwing around, after you had… Shit." There was something wrong with the situation, very, very wrong.

Cameron was looking practically sick to her stomach, and House, well House was looking really undone, almost reminiscent of that day in her office, the day he had realized that no, he was not okay.

"House, what's _wrong_ with Wilson?" she dared to ask, wondering if she would be treated to an explosion or a deflection or something equally unhelpful.

"Wilson… Wilson's depressed. Really depressed. I think he's going to have a breakdown. I might have just sparked it."

"By sleeping with Cameron?" As unhappy as she was about the situation, it wasn't something that Wilson should have been overly affected by, not when the young doctor was leaving the next day.

"He thinks he can't help me anymore… he thinks I'm self destructive. I… can't get him to understand…" He looked off into the distance at that, still talking more to himself than to her, but she caught ever muttered, worried word.

"Get him to understand that I've changed…" He turned back to Cuddy, and fixed her with a biting glare. "Well, I couldn't get _you_ to understand that either, so I guess _I'm_ the one at fault here."

"Don't say that, House." Cameron said softly, comfortingly, and Cuddy felt a thrill of anger towards her. She shouldn't be the one that House turned to for comfort, but it was the Dean of Medicine's own fault that she was no longer that part of House's life.

"It's true." House muttered, and at that moment, the front door flew open, bringing in the cold rainstorm that had been reigning outside.

"Wilson!" Cuddy exclaimed, and strode over to him. He was soaked from skin to bone, and looked like he had been through a war zone. His knee was bloodied and his face was scraped; it looked like he had taken a pretty bad fall.

House tried to limp over quickly to his friend, but he twisted his leg in a way that couldn't be forgiven in his attempts at speed, and he collapsed on a chair, gripping his thigh in agony.

Cuddy placed an arm around the dripping drunk, and escorted him to the dining room table, where he took a seat next to his best friend.

"Cuddy…" he muttered, looking around wildly. "What are you doing here… can't stay here, got to get out..."

'I'm not going anywhere, Wilson." she said firmly, but he just looked up at her with wide, bloodshot eyes.

"No, no, not you… _I_ can't stay here, got to go somewhere else… hurts too much... gotta get my things, gotta leave..."

Cuddy looked at him in alarm, and she could feel Cameron and House's eyes on her.

"What hurts, Wilson, what's too much?"

"I can't be here…. Knowing that… I'm too much for him… that I can't do anything for him... he still hasn't changed...Take me to the hotel… take me out of here…"

He then yelled loudly and nearly fell out of the chair. Cuddy forced him back onto the seat.

"We need to get him to the hospital Cameron," she said, turning around to face the blond haired doctor. Her practical side had taken over, and she no longer thought about who had slept with whom but what she needed to do to help her friend. "Who knows what's wrong with him."

"Don't worry, Lisa, I'll take him." Cameron said somberly, surprising Cuddy with the use of her first name. "I should get going. I'll get him a room, get him set up." She heaved Wilson off of the seat, and steadied the man, making sure that he was easy on his feet.

"I'll get his things." House said, finally having worked out the kink in his leg, and he got up, limping more heavily that Cuddy had seen him limp in a long time.

"Are you sure, Cameron; you don't have to, I can get him a room in Princeton-Plainsboro."

"No, I'll take him. He just needs a bed. And out of this house."

'What do you think is wrong with him?" Cuddy asked, worried.

"I don't know. But I'm sure it's nothing that can be fixed overnight." the younger doctor said gravely.

House returned with a suitcase full of Wilson's things, and he gave them to Cuddy to carry, having exhausted his leg's capacity for the night.

He collapsed on the couch, nursing his thigh.

"Cameron. Thanks… for everything. For talking to me. For… _caring_ about me. For being ridiculously emotional and irrational about nearly everything you do." He mumbled from the couch, almost inaudible. "I would get up and hug you, but I can't. Take care of Wilson. He needs it." And with that, the world renowned diagnostician fell asleep. Cameron spared one glance back at Cuddy, before picking up her suitcase and Wilson's keys, guiding the man out of the door.

Cuddy was alone in the house, and she was exhausted from her day, in no shape to walk, let alone drive.

She saw no choice but to sprawl out on the couch adjacent to House's, and so, she did.

Sleep came easily, but it was, by no means, an easy sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Lisa Cuddy woke up warm.

Someone (and she had a vague, smile-inducing idea who), had placed a pillow under her head, a blanket over her body, and a pair of warm, woolly socks on her feet.

She was utterly comfortable, more comfortable than she had been in weeks.

It was warm in the condo, and she could smell the distinct aroma of freshly brewed coffee, a smell that she had always loved.

But it seemed to be too intense to be coming from the kitchen, and so she opened her eyes, to a House who was sitting on the couch next to hers, staring intently at her sleeping form.

"House…" she started, and couldn't figure out how to finish. He waved mockingly at her, and set his mug down, leaning towards her.

"Yup, that's me. Warm? Comfortable? No kinks? Well, you _have_ kinks_,_ but I meant in your neck, not in your sexual psyche. I was thinking Belgian waffles for breakfast, with a raspberry- orange reduction and fresh Devon cream. Maybe an apple pear salad and London Fogs to drink. Or is that too rich for your little figure? I KNOW you don't have any baby weight to worry about, so hopefully your delicate stomach can handle real butter and cream." Cuddy smiled weakly at his remarks, happy that her reaction to his _love_ hadn't destroyed his sarcasm muscle.

"That sounds lovely, House." she replied, getting herself up.

"That sounds lovely, House." he imitated in a high pitched voice, rolling his eyes at her. "Jeez, _you_ crush _my_ dreams for once, and suddenly there are no comebacks? The comebacks were my favourite part!" She rolled her eyes right back at him.

"Comeback enough for you?" she challenged, her eyes sparking up again. This was what she had missed with him; their constant battles were as much a source of energy as they were an energy drainer.

He simply grinned at her, before heading into the kitchen, singing an old English show tune at the top of his lungs while he fumbled through the fridge.

She let a small smile grace her features before turning away from him, heading for the bathroom. If there was one thing she needed, it was a shower.

She definitely couldn't wait until she got home to shower… home!

She had left Rachael with a sitter while Lucas was out of town, but she had only agreed until two in the morning!

Quickly, she rushed around the condo, looking for a phone, and as she careened around the halls she found herself face to face with House's chest. He was warm, and his t-shirt was soft against her face.

"Whoa, slow down there, Cuddy, I'm not as young as I used to be." he said teasingly, looking down at her head.

She separated her face from his chest, and looked up at him.

He was wearing an arrogant smirk, and seemed to be looking at… her breasts. Of course.

"House, what are you doing?"

"Hmm?" he asked, seemingly snapping out of a trance. "Sorry, Greta and Rosanne were distracting me."

"I thought you were calling them Patty and Selma." Cuddy replied dryly, moving away from him in further search of the phone.

"The thought of associating the twins with cancer was too much for me." House replied, putting a gigantic pout on his scruffy, lined face. "Okay, devil woman, where are you going? It's a little late for an impromptu Vicodin search; Wilson's got this place hotwired. Nothing stronger than ibuprofen gets in." As if responding to his comment, House's thigh twitched, and he fought the urge to gasp in pain.

Cuddy continued moving around the apartment, and stopped in the kitchen, where she spied a cordless phone sitting on a table by the clock.

"I need to check up on my child, House. You know, the one I left in my house with a babysitter that was supposed to leave at two am to come looking for you?"

She reached past him and grabbed the headset, dialing the number.

"Relax, Cuddy." House said, and pulled the phone out her hand. She looked at him incredulously, and made to get the phone back, but he held it over his head.

"What are you-?"

"I called your house earlier." he said, looking uncomfortable. "I got up around three and phoned. 'Cause I knew you'd get all mother bear on me if I let the brat stay alone in the house." He added the last part in hopes that she would miss the caring that had come with the gesture, but it was too late.

She smiled at him, looking genuinely pleased with him for the first time since their dance all those weeks ago.

"Oh, come on, you don't need to get all sappy on me, anyone could have figured out that impromptu sleepover plus year old sprog equals House needs to call to make sure that caretaker knows mama's having a later night that she expected."

He grinned evilly at her, before turning towards the waffle maker, which had started smoking.

"You didn't _say_ anything to her, did you?" Cuddy asked. The last thing she needed was the nice college student she had finally settled on asking her about her annoyingly complicated love life.

"Of course I _said_ something to her, how do you think I got her to stay until you get back? You owe her an extra ten for every hour after two, by the way. She had to reschedule a Family Psychology test today."

"That's not what I meant."

"Don't worry, Cuddles, your secret burning desire for one Greg House is safe with me." She blushed at that, for reasons known to everyone but her, and she sat down on a stool at the counter as House went about preparing breakfast.

"Don't you have something better to do than watch me peel apples?" the curmudgeon asked, carefully leaning down to get a bag of fruit from the produce drawer in the fridge.

"Not really." she replied, and watching with fascination as her employee sliced two Gala apples into perfect pieces. He then cored the pears and sliced them up just as carefully, his knife separating the flesh of the fruit as easily as any cut she had seen him make in a person.

"You're not allergic to anything weird, are you?" he asked, more for conversation than actual curiousity. She knew that he knew nearly everything about her, from the day her period started to what she could and couldn't have near her body.

"Not knocked up by the boyfriend, are you? Wouldn't want to risk the honey from the farmer's market then, would we?" She rolled her eyes at him again, happy that the action had once again become common practice.

"No." she said, pretending to be irritated. He knew otherwise, though, and looked back at her, smiling more than she had seen him smile in a long time.

_Maybe being around you like this just makes him happy, _a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like James Wilson said. _Oh yeah, _she thought back, _I've been making him _real _happy these days, what with all the friendly conversations we've been having. _

He went back to the fridge again, taking out a lemon, an orange, and a container of raspberries, as well as a jar of something deep and red and delicious looking.

"Already had the reduction ready." he said, shaking the jar at her before rolling the lemon on the chopping board and slicing it neatly in half, squeezing it into a little metal bowl.

He did the same with the orange, then went to the cupboard and took out a jar of rich looking honey, as well as a container of cinnamon sticks.

'You're lucky I can cook now, Cuddy. All you would have gotten before was a bowl of stale cereal and some Irish coffee." He took out a mortar and pestle and ground the cinnamon finely, before adding it to the bowl with the juice.

"Would you mind watching the waffles? Seeing as you aren't really doing anything except distracting me." She got up and went over to the waffle maker, whose timer still showed a minute left on it.

She was surprised at the ease at which she had found a plate to put the waffles on.

Everything was in its place in this kitchen, and that gave her a strange sense of unfamiliarity, as if this wasn't really where House lived, but where a House robot lived, going about his daily business as the world renowned diagnostician just a little bit wrong.

She could hear him whisking what she assumed was the dressing for the fruit salad, and moments later she heard the light _bing _that told her the waffles were done.

She lifted the lid of the machine, breathing in the heavenly scent of well-made waffles. She could detect the hints of nutmeg and brown sugar in them as she carefully lifted the finished product out of the machine and onto the plate, being careful not to destroy the masterpieces.

"You can put more batter in now. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell can't live on only one waffle." She agreed with him. As much as she cared about maintaining her petite hourglass figure, there was no way she would be able to resist having more than one of _those_ waffles.

Her small hands carried the batter bowl over to the waffle maker, and she ladled the mixture into the tray, trying hard to keep the batter within its spaces. She succeeded in not dripping any onto the outer part of the waffle maker, and turned around in pride only to walk right into House again.

The bowl went flying up, and while it miraculously managed not to spill any on her, the majority of the batter landed on House, soaking his head and t-shirt with its sweet, rich goodness.

He looked down at his chest, before looking up and grinning at her.

Her eyes tried hard not to crinkle, but the hilarity of Gregory House, world-renowned bastard, covered in waffle batter was an opportunity too good to pass up.

She let out a loud giggle, and House followed suit with his own scarce heard brand of mirth, and they laughed together for a few minutes before Cuddy reached behind him for a dish towel.

She looked into his eyes, eyes that were blue and light and intense and full of happiness and sorrow at the same time, and realized that there really was no way she could ever have gotten over him.

"Now I _know_ that men like chicks covered in mud, but does the same hold true for chicks and men covered in waffle batter?" he asked, his voice teasing and light.

She smiled as she wiped the pale gunk off his chest, and he felt a thrill of electricity at her gentle touch, a touch that could be felt even through dishtowel and batter and t-shirt.

Her crusading piece of fabric reached his face, and her small hands delicately wiped away most of the batter, leaving his face slightly sticky.

She paid special attention to the stubble that had really turned into a light beard, making sure that she got every bit of batter than she could out of the coarse salt and pepper hair that covered his face.

He smiled at her again.

And she smiled back.

And-

And then-

He was kissing her, kissing her like she had never been kissed before, like she would disappear if he didn't show her just how much he wanted her, and she was kissing back; she could taste waffle batter and the dressing for the fruit salad and even a little bit of coffee, and unlike the last time their passion had resulted in a this flurry of lips and tongues and teeth and hands, there was no bitter undertone of liquor, or, more importantly, of Vicodin.

His lips painted patterns on hers, patterns that she wanted to remember for the rest of her life, because she had never felt so good in her life, never so…

She lost herself in the kiss, and allowed her tongue to tangle with his, chasing his lips with hers and letting his sticky hands roam up and down her body.

His intensity surprised her; she had never known that he contained this much passion, this much need to consume her, to take in every last drop of her that he could.

She could hear herself gasping at the sensation of his mouth against hers, and she was sure she heard similar, if lower, sounds coming from House's throat.

His hands found their way to her hair and she was thankful that she hadn't had her shower yet because he was getting waffle batter all over her body and that was when… She came crashing back down to earth.

She shouldn't have been kissing House.

She shouldn't have given in to the man who had screwed her over almost every opportunity she had given him, she shouldn't have let him kiss her in such a way, she shouldn't have forgotten _everything_ in a moment of passion.

She pulled back from their heated embrace, and one look into his ice blue eyes told her that he _knew_ what she was thinking, knew of all the arguments that she was having in her head.

She had a job, a daughter, (and she thought this with a pang of what just _might_ have been regret) a boyfriend.

"House-"

"I know." he said, cutting her off. "You can't do this." She nodded her head, aware for the first time just how saturated she had become with waffle batter.

"Thank you." he said unexpectedly, and went over to the waffle machine, which, thankfully, hadn't had time to burn the waffles yet.

She sat down awkwardly again, her lips still tingling from the feel of _House_.

"Why?" she asked, after a while.

Why _had_ he thanked her for whatever had just happened between the two of them?

"Why would you thank me for something that shouldn't have happened? Why would you be thankful for the opportunity to torture yourself more over this?"

"Because," he replied, looking at her, a world-weary and disheartening look on his face, a look that nearly cut her in two all over again, "I've _already_ been torturing myself, wondering, for weeks, what that would have felt like. Now I don't have to wonder any more. Now I know." He went back to his salad, and she could hear great thunks where bowl met fruit, and she thought with a thrill of regret that he was probably throwing the apples so forcefully into the bowl because he was angry about what they had done.

And part of Cuddy knew that she wanted nothing more than to get up and return to his arms, to feel his stubble against her skin, to taste the flavour of waffles and citrus and coffee and that something that was uniquely him, something that she could never get from Lucas…

But that…was impossible.

"You going to take a shower?" House asked, breaking her out of her reverie.

"Yeah." she replied, not looking up at him.

Eye contact wasn't an option right now, not when he would see in an instant the emotions swirling around inside her head, the desire for him, the regret, still there after all these weeks, of having hidden everything from him, the need to keep herself in check, not make any mistakes, not screw anything up more than it already had been.

She got up, smoothing out her skirt, an old habit that she had never managed to shake, one that was unnecessary seeing as she was planning on returning to her home, perhaps to a nice cup of tea, and later, when she got home, to Lucas.

"I didn't sleep with her to make you jealous." House said out of the blue, as she exited the kitchen.

She spun around, looking at him in surprise, still looking past his head and around his ever searching eyes.

"She wasn't just _there_, either." he went on, just as determined to avoid her eyes, equally wary of discovering the truth within them. "She sat down next to me on a bench outside the hospital, and she tried to guilt me into apologizing about Chase. Which, of course, I didn't do. Just pointed out that they were doomed from the start, yadda yadda… She knew I was going all depressed teenager on her, though. My oh-so-subtle sentiments on the inevitability of failure kinda tipped her off. We went back here, to have a few drinks… I wanted to _talk_. I wanted to hear an opinion that wasn't Wilson whining about how I needed to stop being so self-destructive, or Nolan's constant tirades on improving myself. She was ready to listen. And then of course, comes the pouring out of my heart, and I'm sobbing into her arms, oh, _so_ cliché, _gasping_ for air as I tell her about how I can't see myself being useful anymore, about how I'm never really going to amount to anything. And then she's yelling at me, and I'm yelling at her, and it all just ends with her kissing me, of all things. I realize, I don't _need _this hopelessness, that there _is_ someone who's willing to just be with me, without worrying about the next day, or the next week, or the next year.

Of course, Wilson had to find us, and go all personal therapist on me, and then _you_ had to come over, and mix things up. It was _nice_. It was nice to just be wanted, and to be useful for something other than curing the incurable. But even that can't shake the feelings of… well, I'm sure you don't need to hear me _moon_ over you. You probably got enough of that yesterday. Enough pathetic _lovesick_ House for the rest of your damn life."

The bitterness in his voice broke her heart; it made her queasy to think of the many miseries of the man before her.

"I _want_ to hear." she surprised herself by saying, and his eyes widened just slightly enough for her to notice, before thinning back into his usual expression.

"No you don't. You just feel sorry for me, you're asking out of pity."

"I have _never_ felt pity for you, House."

He laughed cynically. "Really? Not even after you and Stacy cut out half my thigh?"

"No," she said, her tone convincing to the average person, but House could hear the tremour in her voice. "I would have pitied you if you had been _dead_, but never after you had pulled through."

"You're lying." he said, walking up to her. "Just like you've been lying all these months, about everything. We're not _good_ like this; we've never been good like _this_, not with unresolved issues wedging a huge abyss between us." She had nothing to say after that, and her mouth hung open, no words coming out of it.

"You don't _want_ to be stuck like this, with me throwing myself into my work and treating you like crap, you want our old relationship back, before we kissed, before there was all of this unresolved crap between us. It's stupid. We should fix it."

"We can't." she finally replied, eyes unwillingly brimming with tears. "We _can't_ fix it. It's broken, there's nothing to do about it."

"Oh, god, don't tell me that you're _crying_." House whined, and for that, she was snapped.

"Yes, House, I _am_ crying! And you know why? Because you have the _arrogance_ to mess with my personal life, assuming that you even have the _right_ to, and you've messed everything up! I was just FINE with Lucas before you had to go and-"

"What, find out? You thought that maybe you and him could have six children and start a homeless shelter without me finding out? Jesus Christ, Cuddy, do you know me at all? I'm possessive and stubborn and irrationally rational and you _know_ that! I think maybe YOU'RE the delusional one this time, because thinking that Lucas, of all people, is the one that will fix your desire for company has to be the _stupidest_ thing I've ever heard. I don't even _recognize_ you, Cuddy. You've been acting like an over-emotional teenage girl who's been screwed over by too many hormonal guys. You've been telling everyone who cares that I'm not mature enough for a relationship, but look at the guy you're with! Look at the way you hid him from me, as if you were feeling ashamed of your dirty little secret." She couldn't even look at him at this point, and that just made him even angrier.

"I don't even know why I _want_ you anymore. You've disappeared into this cautious, defenseless, sickeningly dependant persona, a Dean of Medicine that needs a seedy PI to help her with her illegitimate bastard child. It's ridiculous. I feel like I've been thrust into a soap opera, plot twists and secrets at _every_ turn! You act all self-righteous and superior, but you can't even _admit_ to yourself that the only reason you _ever_ went out with Lucas was to get over me! And you _still_ haven't! You can't even admit to me that you've done something disgustingly wrong, because YOU don't even know who you _are_ anymore!" He was shaking with the effort of shouting, and the hand on his cane was gripping the third leg so tightly his skin had turned a sickly white.

He looked back at her, and her mouth was open in surprise, her eyes brimming over with tears.

"And to think that I made waffles for you." he finished with a harsh mutter, turning away from her.

She barely suppressed a snort at that comment, and he whipped back around at the sound.

"What!?" he practically screamed at her, and she fought the urge to laugh out loud. She had clearly lost it; there was no logical reason to be laughing and making waffles with him one minute, kissing him the next, crying over her own spilt milk, then finding humour in his torment.

"That's your _biggest_ regret in our twisted relationship, making _waffles_ for me? What about the countless hours you've spent plotting my seduction, or the pain of realizing your delusion, or any other horrible thing we've done to each other? Waffles? _Seriously_, House?"

She continued to look at him incredulously, and grew even more confused when his expression got darker still, his stare increasing in intensity until she was sure he would crack under the strain of maintaining it.

"Waffles," he began, in a light voice that contrasted heavily with the expression on his weathered face. "Were the last thing I had eaten before going to the hospital."

She didn't need to ask what trip to the hospital this had been, for instinct told her that it had been when his leg had started to hurt, a pain that he would come to know for the rest of his life.

"Waffles," he repeated. "Were the last part of my pain-free life. Waffles." And here he paused again, watching her expression change once more to one of melancholy and misery.

"Were what my mother made for me after my father made me spend the night in the backyard."

His words drove a blow straight to her chest, and she staggered, trying to find her footing after she had been thrown off balance.

Her breaths came out in ragged gasps as she struggled for air, the weight of his admissions crushing her chest to the point that any movement was impossible.

She had had no idea.

"Bet you're feeling real awful now, aren't you, Cuddy. Never thought that _food_ could mean so much to me, did you? Maybe you had deluded yourself into thinking that I really was just an evil, heartless sociopath. Well, suck it up, because _that's_ what happened. I had a miserable, abusive childhood, and then right after I had thought everything had finally worked out for me, I became a cripple. Kind of hard to hear from your own father than you'll never amount to anything, harder still for it to actually come true. I wonder what he would say _now_, knowing that I can't even get my shit straight to get a woman. Probably treat me to one of his lectures about _manhood_ and courage, accuse me of being _soft_. Bet you never knew that, either, Cuddy, that Gregory House was an emotional wreck, a boy who couldn't stop crying, even when he was faced with punishment for his lack of a spine. Bet you're feeling real bad, right now, for treating me like I would _ever_ intentionally hurt you."

His breath too was coming out in ragged gasps, but it was from the emotional strain he had put himself through in the last few hours.

This conversation was a strange parallel to the one he had had with Cameron; he had never expected to talk about his childhood with someone in a moment of anger, he hadn't wanted to talk to anyone about it except for Nolan and in rare moments, Wilson.

"House-"

"Go home." he said, looking back up at her. "Go home to your perfect child, your perfect boyfriend, your perfect life. I'll be right here, where you left me. Waiting for Wilson to come home."

She sucked in a gasping sob and made to go up to him, but he shrunk away.

"Go _hom_e, Cuddy. Being here isn't going to do any of us any good."

And of course, he was right.

So she picked up the few things that she had lying around the apartment, and slid herself out of the door, glancing back one more time to see House on the couch, cradling a guitar.

She was surprised that she could move, she felt like everything she had ever known had been shattered into pieces.

But her car wasn't far, and she got into it, feeling empty, disappointed that she hadn't accomplished anything with him.

On autopilot, the car drove back to her house, and when she got there, she took Rachael from the arms of her babysitter (muttering half-felt apologies to the poor girl) and held her there, as if she were the last thing anchoring her to sanity.

And at this point, she was.


	5. Chapter 5

Usually, Lisa Cuddy's phone didn't ring at midnight.

In fact, Cuddy's home phone rarely rang at all, because all business calls (and the calls from her _boyfriend_) went through her cell phone.

So of course, her drowsy mind came to the conclusion that someone who didn't know the rules had phoned her in the middle of the night.

Or, of course, someone who simply _disregarded_ the rules.

"Hello?" Lisa Cuddy mumbled into the seldom used receiver, and was met with silence.

Perhaps her brain had just been playing tricks on her, waking her up in the middle of the night for a phone call that had never been, or perhaps-

"Cuddy?" a low voice said, and she recognized it, even in her half-awake state, to be Gregory House's.

"Yes?" she whispered, suddenly afraid. House was furious with her; there was no reason for him to call in the middle of the night other than…

"Are you okay?' she asked softly, bracing herself for the answer. It never came, though, and she waited another minute for him to say something.

"House?" Her voice was the only thing she could hear in the silent, almost winter night, and she was sure he could hear her careful, shallow breaths through the phone.

"I'm not… hurt, or anything." he said after a pause. She let out a sigh of relief, and her body relaxed against the bed.

And then-

"But Wilson is."

And her fear turned back on, her heart beating faster and her hair standing on edge.

"Where are you?" she asked urgently, and the answer came soon after, the words stumbling out of his mouth in such a tone that her heart broke for the pain he must have been feeling.

"At the hospital." And then came the most painful pause she had ever been through in her life, and she willed herself to keep breathing. "Wilson tried to kill himself."

A gasp escaped her lips, but her brain put words in her mouth.

"I'll be right there." she said, maintaining a façade of control through the churning of her insides. "And House," she paused, and she could now hear his heavy breathing in the background. "I'm sorry."

***

Her hair wasn't done, her make-up was smeared, and her clothes were not up to her usual standard, but when one's friend has tried to kill himself, one generally does not put much store in appearances.

Her miraculously sneakered feet carried her to the room that she now knew to contain James Wilson.

Tears tried to fight their way out of their ducts, but her determination kept them in.

She opened the door, and was greeted by what had to be one of the worst sights in her life, worse, even, than House lying in a hospital bed, comatose because of his infarction.

The acerbic bastard diagnostician stood at Wilson's bedside, stroking his best friend's hand.

Cameron was on the other side, and she had obviously been crying quite heavily.

House, on the other hand, simply looked numb, and that she understood; that he had experienced so much pain he couldn't feel anymore wasn't a foreign concept to her.

Not after her miscarriages and Joy.

She silently walked up to him and rested her hand on his forearm.

He didn't shrug it off.

"What happened?" she asked softly, looking up at the diagnostician.

It was Allison Cameron who answered.

"I took him to my hotel." she began quietly, looking down at the floor. "I got him a room. I went back to the hospital, to collect my letter of recommendation from House. I went to the grocery store, to get some food for my suite. I cancelled my flight. I went to the spa, for a massage. I got back to the hotel around ten o'clock, after going for dinner with an old friend, and I went into my room. Then I remembered the cake I had bought for Wilson. I went to his room, and knocked on the door, but no answer came. I had a room key, though, and I thought I would just slip in and put it in his fridge. I found him-" She had to stop and take a breath, before continuing. "I found him in the living room, with a gun at his temple. I did the first thing I thought of. He was about to, to pull the trigger. So I leapt at him, and… it went off. Angled so it just missed his heart and went through his right kidney. I called an ambulance. I called House while we drove over. He called you when we knew Wilson was stable."

Cuddy looked at House, for confirmation, but he just looked at Wilson, his fingers still absently tracing a pattern on the oncologist's hand.

There was a question hanging in the air, a question that demanded to be asked every time someone tried to commit suicide: _you didn't have any idea?_

But she knew the answer.

The look on House's face gave it all away.

No one had seen it coming, not this soon, but to say that it was a surprise James Wilson had tried to kill himself would be a lie.

Someone had once said to her that Wilson was the saddest man in New Jersey.

And here was the proof that perhaps, he was.

"He should be waking up soon." Cameron said, breaking her out of her thoughts. "The anesthesia from the surgery should be wearing off. We were really lucky; the bullet was a small caliber and didn't do too much damage." She didn't bother to mention the fact that if they hadn't been lucky, James Wilson would likely be dead.

After all, he _had_ pulled the trigger; if Cameron hadn't thrown herself at him…

House couldn't stop dwelling on these things.

His mind was hazy, and he kept going back to the moment when he had received the call from his former employee, the call that had silenced his bitter, brooding mind, all thoughts grinding to a standstill as he heard the magic word, suicide.

Never before had he truly realized how much Wilson meant to him, never before had he realized how much the man was a part of his life.

Even the _attempt_ at suicide had rent a burning hole in his chest, and that hadn't done anything to sooth the wound of his continued failure with Lisa Cuddy.

He didn't know what he would have done if his best friend had actually succeeded in killing himself, but there was a high chance that _he_ would have been dead twenty-four hours later.

It pained him, thinking about what must have been going through Wilson's head, what had driven him to such a drastic solution, and he didn't _want_ to think about it, didn't want to feel so many intense emotions.

He had finished his crying a while ago, but he was numb; he barely registered Cuddy's presence beside his body, could barely hear the softly spoken words of Allison Cameron, couldn't move a muscle, the pain in his leg dulled from the crushing burden of _why _that had fallen onto his chest.

He was lucky the worst of the blow had been dealt with, for all he could feel now was a strange dizziness, a separation from his body, his mind floating high above the body that was shakingly standing beside James Wilson's bed.

The coward's way out, he had always thought of it, and now, the man who had always blamed him for running away from problems had tried to commit the biggest evasion that someone could.

Never had Wilson mentioned suicide, never had he talked about the small handgun he had purchased years ago, aside from a small comment about self defense, never had he seemed to be deeper into his depression than the average person.

Perhaps Amber Volakis would know, if she could tell him everything that he had whispered to whatever was left of the person she had been, late at night, just loud enough to be heard through the vents.

Wilson had always been a pillar beside House, shaky at times, perhaps, but always there, even through weddings and divorces, arrests and vomit, death and delusions.

Perhaps his _own_ death was the only thing that could separate James Wilson from the savage black hole that was Gregory House.

He would wake up soon, and the diagnostician didn't know what to say to his best friend, not after something so ridiculously…

He couldn't even come up with a good word for it.

He felt a hand on his arm, and he turned to see that it was Cuddy's; she looked up at him with a mixture of shock, sympathy, guilt and sorrow.

He didn't remove his hand from its position on Wilson's, but he pulled Cuddy into a hug, and she sobbed into his chest, as his free hand rubbed her back soothingly, his appendages on autopilot as his mind whirled around theories.

Unlike when Lawrence Kutner had killed himself, there had been a witness, and she had seen the entire affair, preventing it from ending up like the event that had likely triggered his mental breakdown.

But that meant that there was no questioning to be done, no desperate theorizing about what had _really_ happened.

He had no idea how long he had been standing by his friend's bed, it could have been hours, it could have been minutes.

His left leg was starting to hurt; he had been leaning on it to take the pressure off of his injured thigh, but he was vaguely aware of a slight shaking in his one good leg.

Cuddy seemed to have noticed it to, for she began to guide him into the seat off to the side, a seat meant for friends and family of patients, something House was not used to being.

"You need to sit down." she said, and he nodded briefly, his eyes glassy and blank.

She sat down next to him, Cameron brought another seat to sit next to them, and Lisa Cuddy grabbed Gregory House's hand, interlocking their fingers, placing them on the arm rest between them.

And he looked at her, a tear stubbornly forming in his eye, before letting her rest her head on his shoulder, as the trio waited for Wilson to wake up.

It's strange, how much one's priorities can change in the course of twenty-four hours, but suddenly, the arguments that they had been having about who loved who seemed petty and insignificant when compared to what had happened to the brown-eyed, boy-faced oncologist.

***

Cameron didn't know how long she had been in the room, but the beeping of machines alerted her to changes in Wilson's brain activity, and this lifted her out of the haze she had been in.

She slid herself off of the chair, and walked over to him, seeing his brown eyes opened just slightly before closing.

She gave him a brief check-up before walking back over to House and Cuddy, who were both asleep and resting on each other, Cuddy on House's shoulder, House on Cuddy's head.

She thought, with a small smile, that for all of their differences, their conflicts, their insults and their misunderstandings, that the two doctors really fit together.

They had a casualness to their friendship that could be eliminated in an instant, but rarely did they lose the playfulness in their relationship that everyone in the hospital could indentify, his crude remarks about her body, her well placed shots about the handicap that she had helped create.

Until now.

She had heard the rumours, had seen them together, and now, she had heard House's take on the whole situation, and she could tell that for once, House was allowing his emotions to surface, to the point that he was really trying to do something about it.

As much as she was aware of House's caustic nature, Cuddy was a woman who could put up with his crap, something that _she_ had never been able to do.

Her infatuation with him had been understandable, after all, she was a damaged woman, and her compensation for that was to fix other people.

When she had set eyes on Gregory House, she had seen his pain, and was drawn towards it; his tortured view on life more attractive than any physical feature (although it didn't help that he was damn sexy).

Every crack, every deformation, every missing piece was something she needed to fill in; she gave him words of encouragement, she tried to fill him with her positive outlook.

But of course, being highly intelligent, he was able to see through her efforts, and he soon discovered her motivations.

He tried to let her down easy, in a rare moment of humanity, but even his version of gentleness broke her heart, for what young woman wants to hear that they don't love, they need?

She grew up, maturing into someone who wasn't afraid to fight for what was right for the patient, a woman whose morals guided her decisions.

She saw Chase torture himself over the woman he had killed, she began a friends-with-benefits relationship with him, and eventually, fell for the romance that he had given her, a routine that she would never have gotten from Gregory House.

She moved on, leaving her place in the diagnostics team to be a senior attending in the ER, a place where many broken people came to be patched up, a job that she was only too happy to do.

Yes, people died there too, but they often didn't have a recognizable face, nothing to attach her compassion towards, much easier to be objective towards than a young boy who still had a voice, one who could tell her his hopes and dreams.

It always hurt her when they died, but House was right, attachment rarely gave her anything good, not when they died or met a more horrible fate.

She stitch up wounds, gave fluids to victims of dehydration, and was generally busy.

But never was she able to lose the pull of House, never was that connection severed, never was she able to go a day without being affected by some way by the world famous bastard.

Even when her relationship with Chase had reached its high point, House was always there in the shadows, and when she had found the ring in the sock drawer, he had provided a convenient excuse.

Of course she still had feelings for him; he wasn't the sort of person to just get over.

And yet, when she had discovered Chase's secret, she had immediately blamed _him_, not fully dwelling on the fact that her husband had killed someone.

He _did_ corrupt everyone he met; there was no denying that he had an effect on all the people he came into contact with.

Even through his faults, she wanted to improve him.

Even through her anger at him, she felt empathy, and perhaps that was where she had gone wrong.

If she had just been able to remove herself from his gravitational pull sooner, maybe she could have escaped without a broken heart.

She knew that he had difficulty acting properly, and that he often couldn't do what was best for other people, but she still believed that he could try, and his stunts over the years had angered her, to the point that his games with Taub and Thirteen had been the last straw.

She didn't know if he had _really_ been toying with the patient's life, but that was what it had felt like to her, and her parting words reflected that.

Seeing him on the bench, a week later, had done nothing to curb her compassion towards him, and so, on the last day she was supposed to be there, she had been drawn into his field again, one last time.

She didn't regret sleeping with him, not the act itself.

He had been sweet, incredibly tender, and had left her with a sense of satisfaction she regretted to say Robert Chase never had.

But what had happened to Wilson, that had most certainly been her fault.

The chain of events from the kiss she had given him had led Wilson to put a gun up to his temple, and while she had saved him from himself, she had been the one to set the act up.

She had saved him, though, and that was all that mattered.

At least, that was all that should have mattered.

But she was a feeling person, and all that she felt at the moment was guilt.

She tapped her former boss lightly on the shoulder, after giving Wilson a few minutes to get his doubtlessly jumbled thoughts together, and the tap, of course, didn't rouse House in the least.

It did, however, wake Cuddy up, and she gave him the kind of look that asked a thousand questions.

"He's awake." she whispered to the older woman.

"Wilson's awake." Cuddy whispered into House's ear, and he woke up immediately; whether it was a reaction to her words or her presence was unclear.

House blinked his eyes a few times quickly, and lifted his head off of Cuddy's, before slowly getting up, reaching into his pocket for a bottle of medication and swallowing a few pills before making his way over to Wilson's bed.

He was nervous, Cameron could tell that much.

And for good reason.

_She_ had no idea what to say to the man, she had simply taken on the role of doctor and given him a check-up, before stepping aside for his best friend to take over the first conversation.

She had seen many suicide attempts in her career at the ER, but never before someone she had known.

And that, of course, made it all the more tragic.

It was hard enough not to be affected by the myriads of strangers that came through the hospital doors, but seeing James Wilson, resident House enabler and advice man, in a hospital bed, after trying to kill himself, hit an area of herself that she hadn't been in familiar terms with since the death of her first husband.

She chuckled sadly to herself; at this rate, she was going to have as many marriages as the man lying before her.

House had finally made his slow way to Wilson's bedside, and he was now leaning over the oncologist's face, obviously trying to find words to say.

"You idiot." he said finally, and a tear fell off of his face onto the man's nose, and Wilson half-heartedly wiped it off. "You complete _idiot_. You complete and _total_ idiot." He continued to mutter about Wilson's utter idiocy, before the man in question raised a shaky hand.

House's eyes widened and he fell silent, waiting for his best friend to speak.

"There wasn't anything else I could do." he said mournfully, and House continued to stare at him, before Wilson looked away in shame.

"There was always something else you could have done." House said quietly. "Always something better than ending your own life. _Life_ is all we have. Life is all we're going to get. I know I've nearly lost mine more than I can count, but you… you're worth something. You shouldn't have to have sunken this low."

Wilson didn't say anything, and looked down at his chest.

"We were lucky." he continued, still looking at his best friend. "Cameron leapt at you when she saw the gun at your head. It just missed your heart and entered through your kidney. We were able to get you into surgery on time, and not much damage was done. You'll have to take it easy for a while… and I'm not letting you out of my sight. I'm serious. I can't take any more drama right now, what with…well, it's probably not good for you to think about everything that's been going on. You should… just rest. I can bring you something to eat, I'm sure you don't want to suffer through hospital food as well as an internal injury. Although you _are_ a HUGE idiot, so maybe I will let you suffer. If you do something like this again…"

Wilson laughed lightly.

"What?" House asked, narrowing his eyes at the man.

"You're usually the one on the bed, me telling you… not to be an idiot."

"Yeah, I get it, reversal of roles, how ironic, yadda yadda yadda… Promise me that you'll _never_ try to kill yourself again."

"House…"

"_Promise_ me." Cuddy could hear the intensity in House's voice, and looking over at teary-eyed Cameron, she was sure that she could hear it too.

Wilson was House's better half, without him, she was unsure of how well he would function.

"I can't…"

"I've been here for over twelve hours, worried SICK about you. You never talked to me about killing yourself, not once! I would have helped!"

"No you wouldn't have." Wilson said sadly, giving him a small smile. "You would have told me that I was being too dramatic, that I needed to get a grip and stop whining about my problems."

"I would have _known_ that you were serious." House replied, regarding his best friend darkly. "I would have done something. I wouldn't have done it well, but I would've done _something_. I wouldn't have let _this_," he said, gesturing to Wilson's body. "Happen. I would have gotten you help, I would have watched you twenty-four hours a day until you gave up the idiotic notion that you couldn't do anything but end your own life."

Wilson's eyes teared up, and he rolled over to look at his friend.

"Seriously?" he asked, hopefully.

"_Seriously_." House replied, and he reached over for Wilson's hand, and the oncologist looked at his best friend with incredulity.

"House…?"

"Shut up. I'm only going to say this once, so you better listen." Wilson turned his full gaze to House, and the older man took a breath before trying to continue.

"I love you," he finally said, looking at an incredibly surprised Wilson solemnly. "In some twisted, brother-I-never-had kind of way, and if you died, I'd probably try to off myself, and you know how much that would affect Cuddles over here. And Cameron too. Oh hell, and Chase and Foreman and the rest of the ducklings."

Wilson looked around and saw Cuddy regarding him forlornly. Cameron had left a few minutes ago, sensing the arrival of a House/Wilson/Cuddy moment.

Cuddy walked over to his bedside, and stood by House, surprising him by taking his other hand, just like they had stood before Wilson had woken up.

"Wilson, if you _ever_ feel the need to do something like this again, you can talk to me." she said gravely, looking him in the eye. "I'm always there to listen, even if I brush you off because I know you're going to try to convince me to jump House or something." House squeezed her hand unexpectedly, and she felt a tingle travel up her spine, though she attributed it to the emotions she was feeling towards their trio.

"When you get out of here, we're all going to go to the apartment and eat Chinese food and watch old movies from our college days, okay?" House said, trying to crack a smile, but failing. It was an unusual enough expression, but in the circumstances, it had become nearly impossible.

Wilson nodded, and House pressed his hand, before removing his.

"We'll let you get some rest." Cuddy said, walking away from the bed.

House followed, sparing one last glance at his friend, before walking out of the room with Cuddy, still holding her hand.

Wilson smiled sadly. He didn't know what had happened to the two since he had last seen them, but something seemed to have changed.

He wanted more than anything for his two best friends just to be happy.

And if they could just accomplish that, without any of their idiocy, then perhaps there was hope for Wilson.

Perhaps he could get over the depression that seemed to follow him wherever he went, and perhaps he could finally let Amber go.

But there was one thing for sure, after hearing House (House!) say that he loved him, he wasn't likely to try to commit suicide again.

Not when he had realized how much the man really cared for him, and how much he really _was_ trying to change.

He slipped easily back into sleep, thoughts of love and life drifting around his head.


	6. Chapter 6

**This chapter gives a little more insight into Wilson's thoughts. **

**And yes, the end is near, and the Huddy is coming.**

**Thanks for all of your FANTASTIC reviews, they've really put a smile on my face.  
**

Wilson woke to see five people in his room.

And he didn't want to talk to any one of them.

House had left, presumably to take care of the patient, something that he would have insisted on doing, even when everyone else was trying to get their bearings together in the face of Wilson's suicide attempt.

But Cuddy was still by his bedside, and he wondered when she had come back, perhaps it had been just minutes after she had left with House.

Cameron had also returned, and he wasn't surprised to see that Robert Chase had his arm around her, as they stood together off to the side, both blond and red-rimmed.

Remy Hadley was standing with Eric Foreman, and he too had his arm around the woman beside him, and Wilson wondered for a moment just how much he had missed in his misery.

Only Chris Taub was missing from the circle, and he briefly speculated as to why the short plastic surgeon wasn't at his bedside.

He hadn't been friends, exactly, with the man, but they had been on friendly terms.

Then, he remembered that Taub hadn't been at Kutner's funeral, instead choosing to be with people who still needed hope, and he remembered what House had said about his employee, that he had once tried to commit suicide himself, and Wilson realized that perhaps it was too painful for him.

Cameron had an expression of utmost remorse on her face, and she wasn't looking at him.

He knew this meant that she felt she was responsible for his suicide attempt, but Allison Cameron didn't know the full story.

Sure, her actions with House had brought the feelings that he had been experiencing all up to the surface, but his desire to end his own life had been long in the making.

He fed on neediness, and prided himself on being able to fix people, to identify with them and become their friend.

Of course, that often became a problem in his profession.

Over the years, he had befriended many patients, and when it was their time to die, he gave them comfort that may not have been there otherwise.

True, he did form a few bonds that could have been considered inappropriate for a professional, but what did it matter?

It turned out that it mattered a great deal, because the burden of seeing people that he knew for months and years, die because of what he couldn't do began to become noticeable.

Like many people in his country, he turned to anti-depressants, all while trying to keep tabs on his reckless best friend.

There was a part of Wilson that admired House greatly, and another part that saw him as the biggest idiot in the world.

But whatever kept his gravitating towards the man, it drove him to help him, and over the years, helping turned to enabling, and he became the provider of one of the world-famous diagnostician's favourite vices, Vicodin.

He still couldn't describe how it had felt, knowing that he had partly caused the delusions his best friend had suffered from in the spring, knowing that through his reluctance to hurt the man, he had let him become too dependant on the painkiller.

Seeing him walk into a mental hospital had almost been too much to bear; he hadn't even been able to cry.

The look, that House had sent him, before the door had closed, it still haunted him, he still thought of it, even when his friend was manipulating people and being a general jackass.

But it didn't haunt him as much as Amber's death did.

He still couldn't let go of her; it had been longer than he had been with her since she had died, but the pain was still raw.

He remembered what Cameron had once told him, that the pain did get better, but it never went away.

But at this point, he wasn't even sure that it would get to be less than it had been when she had first passed away.

House would have said it was stupid, to be grieving for so long for something he hadn't even had for that long, but House didn't understand just how much Amber had meant to him.

For once, he hadn't been in a relationship that revolved around his partner's needs, for once, he had been with a strong woman that could put up with the friend that pushed every relationship he had towards the edge.

He often thought of House as indestructible; even through all of the times he had nearly gotten himself killed, Wilson knew, somewhere, that House was going to be alright, that he would make it through whatever it was.

He had seen him through the infarction, through both of Stacy's departures, through the Vogler reign, through the Tritter debacle…

He supposed that this feeling of his friend's immortality had transferred to Amber, for her strength and steel seemed to also be indestructible.

And then, she had died.

A young woman, full of hopes and dreams, ambition and potential, fell prey to the circumstances that Gregory House had brought about.

For this, he had hated the man more than he had hated anyone before, but not for killing her.

No, he _had_ recognized that House hadn't meant to bring about her death, and he _could_ see, even through the façade of nonchalance that he had put up, that he did feel some amount of guilt about what had happened.

He resented him for being alive.

For being able to survive anything, for being able to escape from a bus crash with only a few scrapes and bruises, for being able to survive sacrificing himself for a woman who was to die anyway, for being so ever present in Wilson's life that he was able to destroy everything good that had ever happened and come out unscathed.

He had resented him for his inhumanity, for his refusal to conform to the norms of the rest of the human population.

He had loved Amber, but he loved Gregory House even more, and it nearly broke him, to realize that the man who had become his best friend was nothing more than a monster, someone who could do things without taking real responsibility.

He came back to the world after his time off to a friend who reminded of everything that Amber had been.

And that had been too much.

When his reality had been shaken again, with the mental breakdown, his road to destruction had suddenly become much shorter, and his speed had picked up.

House came back from treatment, a changed, and yet, not so changed, man, and he had to deal with his problems once more, as if worrying about his well-being for months hadn't been enough.

Then, came the conference.

He had been so focused on his patient, the one that had been in so much pain that there _was_ no pretending to treat it anymore, that he hadn't noticed that Cuddy was in an actual relationship.

He, of course, had really screwed that one up.

He was angry at Cuddy, sure, for thinking that a man like Lucas was a better choice than someone who was really and truly in love with her, but he was angrier at himself, for not taking care of his friend properly.

He should have subtly (oh, and he was SO good at subtlety), asked her about her life, perhaps casually slipping House into the conversation, perhaps wondering aloud if she still had feelings for him.

Maybe then, he would have noticed her nervousness, and her reluctance to talk about her personal life.

Maybe then, he could have stopped House from confessing to things that were difficult for him to confess, things that he certainly didn't do for just anyone.

It was his fault that the crushing blow of rejection had been spread from House to the members of his team, new and old, causing a rippling effect that reached far and wide.

Suddenly, personal problems were brought to the surface, and the tangle of conflict threatened to strangle each and every one of them.

One would think that Wilson had escaped the drama unscathed, but his outward appearance gave no clue to what he was really feeling.

It was all his fault, really, that House had become so inwardly conflicted that he had to take it out on the people around him, that Chase and Cameron's marriage was ruined because of what House thought he needed, that he had dragged out the diagnosis of a patient into a needless game to entice his two former fellows to come back.

He hadn't been a good friend, and House had done nothing but try to improve in the past few months, he had even saved his professional reputation.

And Wilson repaid him by letting the man go back to what he once was.

But all that hadn't even been enough to push him towards suicide; no, it was a nine-year old boy that he was treating.

Usually, he could deal with child cancer patients, but this one had been different.

It was his eyes.

The last time Wilson had looked into those eyes, he had been saying goodbye to his first ex-wife.

After months of the bitterness and guilt that had surrounded the death of her son, they had finally been forced to part ways, a life lesson that Wilson was forced to learn, soon after becoming a practicing oncologist.

He had met her when he had taken her son Callum's case.

He had had colorectal cancer, and the prognosis had been terminal.

The cancer had metastasized to the point that any treatment was futile; it had been caught too late.

But upon inquiry, he had been unable to tell the sweet green-eyed boy that he was to die.

And so, he had been caught up in a web of lies that went on for months.

He had fallen in love with the boy's young mother, a woman who had been through enough tragedy in her life that any God would have spared her the death of her only son, a son that had been with her since she had graduated high school.

She had been very much broken, and he had very much wanted to fix her.

The proposal created a pocket of happiness that was too short lived, and even getting married, one of the first true happy moments of James Wilson's life, did nothing to soften the blow that Callum's death had been.

The worst thing, perhaps, was that Callum had died hating his step-father, the man who hadn't had the courage to tell him his fate.

The marriage fell apart, an occurrence that would become only too familiar, and he moved from where they had lived, from place to place to place until he met Gregory House at a medical conference, and the rest, of course, was history.

He was shocked, twelve years later, to find a boy with the eyes he had fallen in love with early into his practice, sitting with a man whose features he shared.

His ex-wife had died five years earlier, in a car accident, and the father had raised the boy.

But, like his brother, his colorectal cancer had been caught too late.

And, once again, there was nothing to do but wait for him to die.

He had told his Andrea's son, for the second time in his life, that he was to die in six months to a year, the day that House had told Cuddy what he really felt towards her.

And of course, in his desolation and anger at life, he had overreacted to his friend's actions, drinking himself into a stupor.

Of course, he had convinced himself that there really _was_ nothing left to live for, not when another son of Andrea's was to die, not when House had screwed things up with Cuddy so badly that there really was no hope left, not when Amber's death still hung over him like a shroud.

So the gun that he had in his briefcase had made its way to his hand, and had travelled with it up to his temple.

A blur, then nothing.

A hospital bed, a room full of people who cared about him.

His friend, who called him an idiot and told him that he loved him.

Everything in his life had led up to this, and for the first time since he had woken up, he truly regretted what he had tried to do.

He hadn't gone through med school, three marriages, and a helluva friendship to be put under the ground, forty years too soon, with a hole in his head.

But this was where he had ended up, and he hoped that he would never have to end up here again.

He felt like a coward, a failure, a disappointment, and he wanted nothing more than the people in his room to go away.

He feigned sleep for a little while, and he could sense his colleagues filtering out; his parents and his one sane brother had already been by and exchanged words of grief.

Before long, Cuddy was the only one left, and he opened his eyes, sitting up.

"Where's House?" he asked, just barely looking into her eyes.

"He's with his team. Working on the patient." she answered, emotionless.

"Has he, has he been in here since you left together?" Cuddy made a face at the word _together_.

"No." she said, trying but failing not to make an irritated face at him. "And we did not leave 'together'."

"Right," Wilson smiled, making an 'I-don't-believe-you' face at her. "You were just holding hands because you were cold."

She blushed furiously at that.

"We shouldn't be talking about me, we should be talking about you." she said, trying to change the subject.

His face turned sour at that, and he looked away.

"We don't need to."

"Yes, we do. Forgive me if I want to know why my friend tried to kill himself."

He turned back to Cuddy, regarding her sadly.

And he talked to her for hours, about his marriages, his practice, and his friendship with House.

At the end of it, Cuddy was crying, and Wilson's eyes were red and his speech shaky.

And House was standing in the doorway, tears on his face, once again. He had heard nearly everything.

It seemed he had done more crying in the last twenty-fours than he had done in the past twenty-four years.

But everything had been brought back up to the surface, things he hadn't dealt with fully before, his childhood and his insecurities, his addictions and his depression.

None of it had done anything to lift him out of the mood he had been in for the past few weeks.

He walked over to Wilson's bedside, and sat next to Cuddy, pulling her into his arms, as Wilson regarded them with a melancholy smile.

The three sat in silence, as they shared the same air, fleeting expressions drifting between them, before House struck up a conversation about hospital food.

He didn't return to his office for hours, and his team had the sense not to interrupt him, not when he was with Wilson and Cuddy.

The patient was cured, six hours later, but neither House nor Cuddy had left Wilson's bedside for more than a bathroom break.

They shared stories of their college days, House slipping in snide remarks about Cuddy's capacity for partying, Cuddy slipping in remarks about House's capacity to piss off authority figures, while Wilson chuckled lightly, eating the Thai takeout that Cuddy had ordered for them earlier.

Jokes were made about Wilson's attempt on his own life (by House, of course), but never did they slip into more serious topics, no one being comfortable with being so open again.

Cuddy answered frequent calls from Lucas, and every time she got up to talk to him, House shared a look with Wilson.

He rolled his eyes, seemingly mocking the PI's obsessive caring about his girlfriend, but his best friend knew better.

It hurt him, when he saw her smile while talking to Lucas.

He wanted her smile like that when she was with him; he wanted her all to himself, no walls between them.

But walls seemed to be what their relationship was all about, now.

When she sat down, his arm was always around the back of her seat, and she never made any comment about it.

He would take what he could get.

And this closeness, their playful discussions about the Twilight fad and the overabundance of short-shorts in the winter climate, seemed to be all he was getting for now.

Miraculously, Wilson's suicide attempt had brought the three of them together, for they never seemed to run out of things to talk about, not when there were nurses to gossip about and people to mock.

The day turned into night.

Cuddy looked at her watch, and saw that it was nearly six o'clock, the sky having gotten darker some hour and a half previously.

"I have to go," she said sadly, giving Wilson a small smile. "I told Lucas I'd be home around six."

"Go," Wilson said, waving her off weakly. "Go home to your family." House's chest clenched painfully at Wilson's words; since when had she and Rachael and _Lucas_ been a family?

Cuddy got up to hug Wilson; he moved himself to wrap his arms around her.

"I'm sorry." he whispered in her ear, and she leaned back, looking into his eyes.

"Don't be." she told him, placing a kiss on his cheek, before removing her arms from him. "You're going to be fine, Wilson."

Cuddy turned towards House.

"So, I guess this is goodbye." he said mockingly, brushing fake tears out of his eyes.

He stuck out his hand for her to shake, looking at her expectantly.

She surprised him by pulling him in for a tight hug, and when they separated, she couldn't help but feel the electricity between them, electricity that remained even through lies and suicide.

She looked up at him, and he stared at her with what could only be described as caring, albeit Housian caring.

An overwhelming sense of love towards the man standing before her washed over Cuddy, and suddenly she couldn't move, not under the gaze of those ice blue eyes.

She remembered how much she had _felt_ when he had kissed her in Wilson's kitchen, how much she had _felt _when he had kissed her after she had lost Joy, and it terrified her.

She wanted to kiss him; she wanted to feel everything that she had felt when his lips were on hers, his hands on her body.

And so, she quickly strode out of the room, wanting to get home to her _family_ before she did anything rash.

House stood there, looking at that spot she had previously occupied, and didn't move for several seconds, before whirling around to sit down next to his best friend.

"You two had a bit of a moment back there." Wilson commented.

"Shut up." House muttered, as he stared out at the hallway.

"I'm serious, you looked like you were about to kiss for a few seconds."

"Stop deflecting!" House whined, putting a huge pout on his face. "We're should be talking about YOU!"

"That's what she said." Wilson muttered, rolling his eyes. "All you two do is evade and evade and evade, deflect and deflect and deflect, you rationalize EVERYTHING. It's getting _really_ tiring. If she could just figure out that she's just dating Lucas to replace you, then-"

"Then she'd go falling into my arms, I get it. I'm not in the wrong this time, I'm actually trying."

"She slept over, that night." Wilson said, with a look of epiphany. House nodded.

"Did anything… happen?" House rolled his eyes.

"Like what?"

"Like, oh, I don't know, you proclaiming your undying love for her? Oh wait, you already did that."

"Don't remind me." House said bitterly. "Biggest mistake of my life."

"Oh, I doubt _that._"

"I don't know, Wilson, it kind of drove you towards attempting to kill yourself."

"You're not seriously blaming yourself for my suicide attempt, are you?"

House was silent.

"House, it had nothing to do with you."

"Yeah, how come it happened after you found me in bed with Cameron? If it really had nothing to do with me, you would have offed yourself some other time, not after confirmation of my self-destructiveness."

"Yeah, maybe that had something to do with it, but it wasn't the whole story. It was Andrea's son, House, Ryan. He's nine years old, and I had to tell him what I had never told his brother. Everything I had felt when Callum had died came rushing back to me, and I looked back on my life and realized that I really was a failure. I couldn't help you, I couldn't help… I had to let him _kill_ himself, House. You have no idea what that was like."

"No, I don't. But I know what it's like to want to kill myself. This life, in all its shittiness, is all we have. Taking that away from yourself is the worst thing that you can do, because even suffering is something more than not existing."

"You don't know that. You don't know that there isn't something better, pain free, after we move on."

"I don't know. But I want to live like this is my last life, because in all likelihood, it is. And you shouldn't have been so quick to want to get rid of it, just because you had been feeling-"

"What, empty? Useless? Like I couldn't do anything right for anyone anymore? Like just getting up in the morning was too much of an effort?"

"Yeah, all those things! You could have talked to me, I would have listened; though I would have made insensitive comments, I would have listened and known what you were going through because I feel those things everyday! But I still get up, because I have something to live for, _life_! You can't just give up, because, because, because it's too _much_ for you! There are people who care about you, Wilson, people who wouldn't have let you sink this low, if you had just let them. I wouldn't have let this happen."

"Are you sure about that, House? Or would your full attention have been diverted at the last moment by some fancy new case?"

"You son-of-a-bitch." House snarled. "You're the most important person in my life, and I can't even get you to trust that I would do anything to keep you alive."

"More important than _Cuddy_?"

"_Yeah_, more important than Cuddy. If she died… well, I'd probably pull a 'James Wilson after Amber' and drink myself to oblivion, but I wouldn't kill myself. I'd know that you would be there for me, trying to get me up off the barstool and back into real life. But if you died… I don't think I'd survive it. I told you, I love your sorry ass, and if anything happened to it…"

"I thought you weren't going to say it again." Wilson said sadly, and looked up at his best friend, smiling weakly.

"I wasn't. But you forced my hand. Don't make me say it again. I get all sorts of icky _feelings_."  
"You really mean what you said?"

"Me saving you at the conference was just the tip of the iceberg. If you try anything like that again…"

"I know, I know, you'll watch me twenty-four hours a day." He tried to smile again, but House's face remained grim.

"I know, that it hurts you that I don't trust you sometimes… but I can't always put my faith into you. You've proven time and time again that you can't be relied upon… and yet, you've proven that you can be the most loyal friend in the world. I'm sorry, that I have to question every good thing that comes out of your mouth, but it's just become habit, over the years. I guess that for every bit of you that I admire, there's a bit of you that I have to despise. And I'm sorry for that."

House nodded gruffly.

"Come here, you stupid suicidal maniac." he said after a long pause, and pulled Wilson into a crushing hug. "Don't scare me like that again."

"I won't." the oncologist said. "Now go get that devil administrator."

House pulled away, grinning.

"Don't worry. I will." He sat back down and looked at his watch. The watch that Lawrence Kutner had given him.

"I should get going." he said. "I think I'm starting to smell worse than you."  
"Thanks, House. Really means a lot to me." The diagnostician just shot him a fake smile.

"You're not going to try and strangle yourself with your sheets, are you?" House asked, just to be sure.

"No." Wilson answered, and smiled at his best friend. He wasn't going to think of anything along those lines for a long time.

Not when he knew how much House wanted and needed him to be alive.

He watched the crippled man get up stiffly, popping a few pills before walking out of his room.

House stopped at the door, looking back at his friend.

"I kissed her." he said proudly. "She stopped just before the point of no return, of course, but she sure kissed back…" Wilson gave him an encouraging smile, before waving him off.

He knew that somehow, everything was going to be alright.

Someday, everything would be resolved, and though he would never find anything that resembled peace with a man with House in his life, he would find something close to happiness.


	7. Chapter 7

**Did tonight's episode leave you emotionally drained?  
Lost your faith in the characters of everyone?**

**Wondering why the hell Cuddy decided it would be acceptable for her to leave House hanging on Thanksgiving when he was actually trying to be a good person for once? (Because it killed me)**

**Hopefully this chapter will cheer you up, because in all of the fantastical, emotional rollercoasterness of 'Ignorance Is Bliss', I seem to have lost my faith in Cuddy's integrity. **

**Maybe you'll like her better in my fic.**

Cameron was in the doctor's lounge, sitting awkwardly with her ex-husband.

Wilson's suicide attempt had briefly knocked down the barriers that had separated them, but sitting on the old couch, sipping shitty coffee and trying to talk small with the man she believed wasn't who she had fallen in love with anymore was starting to become more tedious that she had expected.

But _had_ she fallen in love with him?

Or had it been a gradual process, the caring that she felt for him, coupled with her physical needs, becoming what she mistook for romance?

Perhaps the only man she had ever really been in love with was Gregory House, for her first husband, while a wonderful man, had never really had a fiery effect on her like he had.

And Robert, he had just been a distraction at first, and then, when he finally became needy, an object for her affections.

Thinking about the many ways in which she had failed to find true romance, the thing that everyone seemed to be after, just made her even more miserable than she had been before everything had happened at once.

Sitting with Chase was growing more uncomfortable by the minute, as they had run out of things to say to each other, the grace period after such a tragic event gone as well.

So it was no surprise to her ex-husband that her face had lit up upon the entrance of House, not when Chase was sure that he would crack under the tension between them.

Somehow, even through all of the horrible things that House had done to him, the Australian had managed to retain his admiration of the man.

But he had no desire to be in the same room as him at the moment, not after Cameron had so candidly mentioned that they had slept together the night before.

He was sure that they would have another heated, meaningful conversation, like the one that had sparked their night together, and so, as soon as the older doctor sat himself down, he gave his condolences and walked off to go home for the night (though there wasn't much night left to go home to).

"Hi." Cameron said softly, as House sat down next to her, nursing a cup of lukewarm coffee.

He had just returned from showering at the apartment, and had visited Wilson's room briefly; upon finding him asleep, he had taken the elevator down to Cuddy's office to see if she had returned, but had come up empty, the Dean of Medicine was apparently still at home, with her _family._

"Hi." he replied, and turned towards her.

"So, you and the Wombat sort things out yet? You coming back _home_ tonight?"

"No," she answered, fixing him with her glare. "I'm still leaving; I booked a flight for next week."

"Wanting to keep an eye on out resident suicidal oncologist, are we?"

"I want to help him recover."

"Ah, of course. How ironic, the needy-eater being fed upon by his female counterpart. I don't know what you know about suicide though; something tells me you've never really come close to wanting to kill yourself."

"What makes you think that?"

"Oh, don't tell me that you've _actually_ tried to kill yourself, that would totally mess with my mojo."

"No." she replied, looking up at him. She paused.

"But my father did."

House studied her face, looking for any clues that would give the answer away. She looked past him, wanting to avoid his searching glare, wanting to just move past the subject.

"He succeeded, didn't he?" the older doctor finally said.  
"Yes." she whispered.

"Why?" His questioning wasn't mocking, not this time, it was simply curiousity. One of House's major faults was not properly recognizing where to draw the line, and more than once, his unrelenting quest for knowledge bit him in the ass.

"Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my mother couldn't stop drinking. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that his oldest daughter had become a prostitute. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had just lost his job. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he couldn't afford his anti-depressants. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the revolver in his bedside table looked oh-so-inviting." She looked at him angrily, obviously upset at the fact that he had so casually brought up a highly sensitive topic.

"So, that's what broke Allison Cameron. Not some traumatizing rape, not a message from God, but her father taking his own life, the coward's way out."

"My father wasn't a _coward_." she growled at him.

"He just couldn't keep up with the times, then? He didn't care enough about his family to stay alive to help them? He didn't think that everything would fall to pieces after his death?"

"Well, if they had, he wouldn't have known, would he? You're the one who constantly points out the ignorance of believing in God and an afterlife, why do you think it would _matter_ to him?"

"It should have stopped him." he muttered, looking down.

"What should have stopped him?"

"Knowing that he would leave behind nothing but sorrow and anger. Knowing that his 'last resort' would destroy everything in his world. It should have stopped him from pulling the trigger. It should have stopped him from taking his own life simply because he didn't want to have to _try_ anymore." he answered bitterly, looking away from her. He had seen enough people destroyed by death, there didn't need to be any intentional destruction, not when humans were fragile enough already.

"You've nearly killed yourself more times than I can count." she scoffed. He turned towards her, fixing her with a serious stare.

"There was always a point, a goal that I was working towards. A reward, at the end, if I survived. The… pleasure of blocking everything out with drugs. Knowing for sure that there really wasn't something after death. Figuring out… what was wrong with Amber. There was always a point."

"Was there?" she challenged, looking into his eyes. There was something hiding in his blue orbs, she could see it, just beneath the surface.

"I've _never_ tried to kill myself." he said, with conviction. But she had learned to tell truth from lies from the man before her, and she knew the falsehood.

"Yes, you have." she said, just as sure. "I don't know when, but you can't know that much about not being able to pull the trigger if you hadn't been there yourself."

"Do you really want to know?" he asked, looking at her darkly.

"Yes." she answered, trying to keep the wobble out of her voice, but there was still a trace of it.

"Do you REALLY want to know? Are you going to try and comfort me, or tell me that there had been no reason for it? Because if you're going to do that, I don't want to tell you."

"I'm sure." She wasn't, but there was nothing more to lose, she couldn't sink any lower into her own misery.

He took a breath, and stared at her more intently, his eyes becoming darker still, all traces of happiness disappearing, a quickly moving cloud falling over.

"There will come a time in your life, Cameron, when you're sure that you've achieved all that you can." he began. She recognized the look in his eyes, the one that he got when he was going to say something that he really meant, that would hurt coming out but would be worth it in the end.

"There will come a time when there won't be any options, at least none that will _remotel_y improve what your life has turned into. There will come a time, when you'll be so convinced that humanity has nothing going for it, that you're just another shining example of the failure of evolution, that you'll know that there isn't anything better for you than ending your own life." She felt the tell-tale signs of tears starting to form in her eyes, hiding just below the surface, but she couldn't turn away, once again, he had her stuck in his pull

"It happens to the best of us, and never to the worst of us. Because the best of us know, one day, that the hardship that follows us, the ripple that we create in the universe, is too much of a sacrifice for everyone else to let continue. We realize that our selfishness, and our greed, and our uncaring, callousness destroys not only what we don't want, but what we have worked out whole life to create, and we realize that in our arrogance, in the race to the top, that we missed what was good about the middle, and in those realizations, the best of us know what we must do to make things right. Unintelligent people consider to suicide to make their pain stop, intelligent, broken, flawed and_ crippled_ people want to end their life because they want other people's pain to go away. It is sinister," he paused again, looking at her still more intensely.

"And it is the truth of things."

Her eyes were teary, liquid brimming over and pooling onto her pretty face, and her expression conveyed so much sadness that House was unsure if he wanted to continue, to inflict more pain on her.

"And there came a time, in my life, that I knew I was too much for anyone. I had turned into a monster, someone who resembled my father too much to not have an effect on me. Stacy had left me, because of my savageness, because of my disregard for what _she_ was going through, and it was all that Wilson could do to stay in the same room with me. I was slowly draining everyone around me. My infarction had taken not only the use of my leg, but everything that had _ever_ been good about me. I couldn't work, I couldn't enjoy myself, I couldn't think, not with all of the pain. I felt that I had deserved all of it. But the effect that I had on Wilson was too much, and though he continued to try and move me past what had happened, I knew he was about ready to give up. Bonnie was giving him hell for spending so much time playing caretaker to poor, crippled Gregory House, and I knew that the sacrifices he was making for what had obviously a lost cause weren't worth it. So, yes, one day, I downed my entire bottle of Vicodin, and tried to go to sleep, forever. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave him with the burden of having a dead friend on his hands, because I knew, in my brilliant perceptiveness, that he would blame himself for not being able to help me enough. So I phoned an ambulance, and went to the hospital to get my stomach pumped. Obviously, I survived. And I didn't try to do something like that again, because when I saw Wilson, after I had woken up, the look on his face, the look on his stupid, overly-caring face wouldn't let me."

"And then he tries to kill himself." she finished for him.

"You have _no_ idea, how much he lectured me. It had to have been at least a hundred hours, over a two week period. He stayed with me, nearly twenty-four hours a day, he took time off from his job, and when his boss found out why he was missing work, to take care of a hopeless charity case of a bad-boy doctor, he fired him. It was a long _fucking_ journey, trying to get better, move past my old life and what I had had before, but I went through it with _him_. Cuddy hired us around the New Year, Wilson before me, and, when he had assured her that I was stable enough to throw myself into my work as a distraction, I got the department."

"House…"

"You don't need to say _anything_. Worse things have happened to other people." he muttered.

"Do you _realize_ how much you've been through? Child abuse, medical school, getting kicked_ out_ of medical school, several times, the infarction, a suicide attempt, Stacy coming back again, an attempt on your life by a gun-waving lunatic, the failure of the ketamine treatment, nearly being sent to prison for a decade for drug possession, the death of your best friend's girlfriend, the suicide of a colleague, a mental breakdown, not to mention all of the personal drama that seems to surround this hospital like a particularly vicious swarm of vultures."

"It's not that much, not in a half-century." he replied.

"Yes, it _is_! And that's just the stuff that I've heard about. You have every right to be miserable."

"I thought that I didn't."  
"No, you don't have the right to take your misery out on other people. But with everything that you've been through, it's no surprise that you're depressed."

House was silent.

"House, you're still a _remarkable_ person, even through you can be a heartless bastard. I've seen you care; I've seen you be human. Don't let anything that anyone's said to you tell you otherwise."

"Even something that you've said? What about how I _ruined _Chase?"

"You _did_." she said sadly. "And you ruined _me_. But a little dose of reality, a little pull out of the clouds, either harms or helps you. I'm not sure that you helped him, because he _killed_ a man. And I know that at the end of the day, it was wrong. But you made _me_ stronger, and for that, I'm grateful."

He looked at her carefully, and she continued on.

"There _is_ no black and white, not anymore. There are just endless shades of grey, some so strong that you're _convinced_ of the ultimate truth. But as you've learned, even something that you're _sure_ you've experienced can deceive you, make you do things that you shouldn't have done. Reality can corrupt you, as surely as fantasy can. And it's all that we _can_ do to try and do what we think is right, and make sure that other people do the same. At the end of the day, we're all trying to save lives, be us doctors or priests, lawyers or florists, lovers or fighters. We're ALL trying to make life a little more bearable, because there's _nothing_ less bearable than life. And nothing more beautiful, more real, more worth it, than what we experience through our senses, everyday. Our mistakes, we learn from them, and though we may not want to believe it, we DO change. We lie, and cheat, but we also give each other the truth, the purest and most sacred thing that there is. Through our experiences, we grow, and try to give ourselves what we think will make things a little more bearable. We are selfish, and we are dirty, and that's how it's always going to be. We can try to change reality, but non-reality _never_ gives us anything concrete to work with. You've taught me all of these things, through patients and insults and everything else that I've experienced. You are the most powerful and most destructive force in my life, and one of the most beautiful. Because you are _human_, through and through, and I now know that having it any other way would never satisfy me."

He looked at her, the whole picture, Cameron, who had grown into a woman far beyond what she had been when he had first met him, Cameron, eyes filled with tears, voice trembling at the magnitude of the truths she had just spoken.

"I'm proud of you." he said to her, for the second time in his life, and she cried, as he awkwardly drew her into his arms.

It was raw, it was dangerous, and it was beauty, in its purest form.

It was not only emotion, but the outcome of everything that they had been through together, the next logical step, what they thought was right.

It was love, and hate, and everything in between the black and white that was supposed to define the world that they lived in.

And, it was what made Cuddy fall in love with him all over again.

Because standing in the doorway, out of sight and out of mind, she realized how futile it was to pretend that Lucas was _close_ to what she needed, because she couldn't find such uninhibited passion anywhere else, no, nowhere would she find such a fantastically complicated, tortured, insightful and raw mind for her to wrestle with, nowhere would she feel that much emotion, nowhere but with House at her side, challenging everything that she did.

And it had taken Cameron's beautiful words on life to make her realize that.

Her time, for contemplations of her worthiness in the world she lived in, it hadn't come yet, not with someone so wonderfully new and pure in her life, but if she kept the façade of happiness up, if she kept denying herself what she really needed, in order to avoid disappointment and regret, the end would come sooner than she wanted it to.

***

She came in through the front door, just as she had always done; taking her winter jacket off, discarding her gloves, scarf and hat in the bin she had set aside for the purpose of orderliness, but felt like she had just woken up from a dream.

She didn't belong in this world, not anymore, not when she had finally realized the agonizing truth of everything.

The light kiss and smile that she got from her boyfriend, it didn't seem to be so genuine anymore, not when she knew someone more dangerously beautiful than him.

But holding her child in her arms, she knew what she had to do.

Because in order to give this child a good life, her mother had to be happy.

And happiness wasn't found in mere contentment, no, not when there was the truth waiting out beyond the comfort of the reliable.

She set Rachael down in her crib, and set out towards the dining room, where Lucas sat waiting, a full breakfast ready for her.

The gesture was so sweet, but now she knew that sweet wasn't what she really wanted.

"Now, I know that you have odd hours, being the boss lady and all, but five in the morning? Did Wilson have a heart attack or something? Not that that's the only good reason for going to the hospital so early. There could have been an emergency, but I probably would have heard about an emergency on the morning news. Or not. I don't really know what you need to go in for… _and_ I should stop babbling. Sorry. I was just worried. Your note… wasn't that specific. But I fed Rachael; she woke up again at four. Yeah. Breakfast is ready."

Cuddy sat down, grateful for the food that she desperately needed, but couldn't help feeling guilty. He had been so good to her, trying to keep their relationship going, and it _had_ been nice, having someone whose motives she always knew to be pure. But maybe she needed the guesswork, the thrill of having someone so fantastically complicated and unpredictable and yet so utterly familiar in her life.

"Lucas…" she started, not knowing where she was going with it.

"Yeah, I know, I didn't have to do this. You could have made better food, I'm sure, but you didn't need the extra work. You've had suicidal friends, and… House to deal with. It's really wearing you out. Maybe I'll get you over to the spa later; you look like you need a massage. You're still beautiful, but you need to relax. I can get you in at three, I know a guy."

"Lucas, it's okay."

"You sure? It's really no problem, I'm sure he won't mind, I saved his life once, back in-"

"Lucas!"

"Right, sorry. You talk."

She looked at him, every trace of sadness and longing and regret visible in her eyes, and he sighed.

"I thought we'd be having this conversation someday. I get it, I'm not the guy for you, I'm out of town all the time, I'm not reliable or romantic-"

"You're all of those things." she said, taking his hand. "But that's not enough. I need someone who can challenge me, who's not afraid to point out what I'm doing wrong, who's…"

"House?" She nodded sadly.

"I was never in love with you. You're a wonderful person, and you've always been there for me, and you've been sweet and reliable and great with Rachael, but I can't keep leading you on like this. I never did intend for this to go on longer than a few weeks, and when it did, I though that maybe it was because it was actually something that would work in the long run. But I still have feelings, strong feelings for House, and I can't let go of them. I know he's disgustingly unreliable, and he's never going to be the one that I can count on to be home for me every night, but that stuff doesn't have to matter. I need his passion, and everything that comes with his insanity."

Lucas nodded.

"I've been trying to convince you that you'd be better off with me, but that's just because I think I've fallen in love with you. But it's stupid to be with someone who's not happy with you. I've been there before, actually. It was a case in-"

She looked at him.

"Sorry. So, do you want me to get my things and be out of your hair?"

"I think that would be best." Cuddy answered.

"I'll, I'll see you around sometime. Or not. I don't know if you actually like me, or if I was just convenient and it all fell into a spiral or something-"

"I _like_ you." she said. "And… and if you want to visit Rachael, you can."

"I'd like that." And with that, he got up, and walked over to the room he had been staying in, and began to pack up his things.

Tears came unwillingly to Cuddy's eyes, despite that fact that she knew what she was doing was right, because it still hurt to let go of something that had given her great comfort through the hardship that House's mental breakdown had been.

But she was happy, for at last, she had finally acknowledged something that had been gnawing at her for a long time.

***

House woke up to the sight of Cameron's annoyingly blonde hair.

He had never really liked her blonde, his comment about her looking like a hooker more than a little serious.

Perhaps she had wanted to change, though, bleach all traces of the pathetic, devil-worshipping existence that she had been living before from her life.

Of course, it hadn't worked.

Though she had moved on, to a different section of the hospital, the burden of her time in the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital Department of Diagnostics still weighed heavily on her.

Thoughts of moving on were quickly shoved to the side as members of his new 'team' came to her for advice; it seemed like she could never be washed clean of the life she had been living before.

Maybe that hadn't been such a bad thing.

She had changed, and definitely for the better, but would she have grown up so well if she hadn't landed the spot on his team?  
She certainly wouldn't have been packed full of so much unrelenting, uncensored reality.

House didn't regret how he had treated her, for any weakness could only be fixed through exposure to the thing that it feared.  
He was happy that he hadn't let her cling to him, like a small child to its teddy-bear in a thunderstorm, because he knew that it wouldn't have been good for either of them.

It hadn't only been a schoolgirl crush, not when she could admit so freely how much of an impact he had made on her life.

Nor was it anything close to true love, for they were born too far apart, too separated by life not lived, neither one good for the other.

And yet, they had helped each other, her, with his morality, him, with her need for a dose of cold, hard truth.

It was neither a fleeting, unaffecting relationship, nor a love affair.

So, it hurt that she was leaving, a little bit.

But he felt no need to make her stay.

She had to do what was good for her, and Robert Chase had to do what was good for him.

And House was happy that the latter was on his team.

And he was happy that he had finally proven that he could have real passion and act upon it, even though it was illegal and had far-reaching consequences, because it hadn't been a cowardly, self-serving act like the ones he had been used to seeing from the blonde doctor, but something that was good for the rest of the world.

He was proud of him too.

Though he wasn't good with change, when true progression happened, he observed it with a small, knowing smile.

He couldn't change, not really, not anymore, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel proud of the people he saw grow up.

Now if only Foreman would become less boring and self-righteous.

That, House thought, had to be impossible.

He heard the door to the lounge open, and wondered briefly what time it was.

He had fallen asleep, just as Cameron's little sobs had died down, but as for how much sleep he had gotten, he had no idea.

He lifted his head out of Cameron's hair, and looked up to see Cuddy.

She caught his eye, but he quickly looked down, not wanting to deal with her, not at that moment.

He was tired of all the mixed signals, the promises of goodness that she had given him so righteously then taken away.

It had felt so right, so good, when they had held hands at Wilson's bedside, but perhaps it was merely a need for comfort.

It had also felt right, when they had kissed in the kitchen, but she had run away from that too.

He wasn't ready to just be a shoulder to lean on; he would only sacrifice if he knew that she was willing to do the same for him.

And with her actions, running away from him at every hint of the connection that so _scared _her and made him feel _alive_, maybe there really _wasn't_ anything left between them after all.

But how could she have just gotten rid of all their history, their years of banter and sexual tension, just because she had decided that her daughter needed a stable, reliable father figure?

Perhaps she wasn't the woman he had slowly fallen in love with anymore, perhaps she really was a shadow of her former self.

Perhaps she really couldn't see the good in him anymore.

Perhaps she never had.

Perhaps he really was just an asset, perhaps, that night, when they had kissed, she had just been needy, and he had just been, for once in his life, perceptive to that.

Perhaps she had just wanted something with him because it was the only thing that she could latch onto.

The thought made him sadder than he had ever been in his life.

Because if he really had misinterpreted everything, messed up every chance he had ever had with her, then he had just wasted years of his life on something that would never happen.

He loved her.

Or had.

And being a thinking, rather than a feeling, person, he didn't want to deal with her, not now; he didn't want to shout out more painful truths.

She sat next to him, trying not to look at the sleeping blonde woman next to him.

"Cuddy." he said, coldly, emotionlessly. It was what he knew how to do; he could hide behind his ability to be a bastard.

"House." she said, and there was a hint of regret, longing, maybe even desire.

But he didn't believe it anymore, he couldn't.

He was tired of hoping and hoping and hoping for things that obviously weren't meant for him.

"What do you want?" he asked bitterly. "Come to tell me how Wilson's doing, or maybe you want to tell me how _fucking_ perfect your life with your goddamn _happy_ family is. I don't want to hear any of it. You don't need to crush me more; I've already fallen to the bottom."

His voice broke her heart, because she had obviously broken his.

"I'm not going to do that." she said softly, trying to catch his eye.

But he wouldn't let her.

"I don't see why you're here, then. There's nothing more to say, no more empty apologies, no more half-felt assurances that you're still my _friend_. The tables have turned, Cuddy. _You're_ the one in denial, and I'm the one making an utter fool of myself trying to get you to fall into my arms."

"House…"

"I'm done. You want something good for yourself, go and find it somewhere else! I don't want to have to wait for you to realize that I was willing to try for you, that I was willing to be there, every stupid step of the way, because I loved you."

The past tense nearly broke her.

"Loved…?"

"Yeah, Cuddy, LOVED! I was _delusional_, because I had _obviously_ fallen in love with someone else, not the woman who's been hiding behind her position over me. You have been _lying_ to me, every damn step of the way! Was it even your hand, that day, when I had finally figured out the façade I had created for myself, or had I invented that too? At that point, well, it would be foolish to try and sort out fact from fiction, because everything that I had been doing had been based on a lie, the story that I had made up. Well, maybe everything I've been doing to try and get you has also been based on a lie, because nothing that you've done since I've gotten back has suggested that you've EVER been in love with me. You've been petty, and destructive, and never ONCE have you believed that I've changed! Do you know what I went through, in there? Of course you don't, because you've never ONCE tried to have a proper conversation with me because you're too damn scared! Scared of what we've become, what we could be! CAMERON knows more about my life that you do right now, because she's made the effort to care. I don't know if you're capable of that anymore. I don't think I want to know, because I don't want _you _to put in that final nail in my coffin. I'll do it myself."

Cameron was lying on the couch, but she had heard it all, and her eyes had started to stream again. Was this what Lisa Cuddy had turned House into? A lovesick, passionate fool trying to get something that he could no longer be sure was even an option?

"I came back here to tell you that I've ended things with Lucas. But if you feel so strongly-"

"Oh, _finally _started to take pity on me? Finally realized that I might try to do what Wilson had done, what with all of the disappointments I've been dealing with lately? I don't need your goddamn pity Cuddy, not now, not _ever_ again. You were right. I'll go back to being the asshole employee; you can go back to being my hard-ass boss."

"I don't want that!" she screamed at him, startling Cameron so much that she jumped in her position on the couch.

House noticed, and got up, and Cuddy did as well.

"Yeah?" he shouted into her face, throwing all of the emotions he had been feeling into it. "Well what d_o_ you want?"

"I want YOU!" she shrieked. He looked at her, eyes wide open, and Cameron slowly slipped out of the room, wanting no part in whatever was to happen later.

"I want _every_ annoying, idiotic, egotistical, unpredictable, brilliant, narcissistic, damaged, insightful, awful, uncensored, stupid, arrogant, crippled, beautiful bit of you! I want to stop with the games we've been playing, I want to wake up with your stupid face in my bed every morning, I want to kiss you until the world ends, I want to hold on to you and never let go! I want to scream at you for every stupid thing that you've ever done and will do, I want to thank you for everything that you've done for me; I want to love you for the rest of my damn life! I want every last part of you, I want to soak you in until I can't take in any more, I want to make love to you until I can't move, I want to-"

She was stopped by his mouth on hers, his hands on her waist, the feel of his long, lanky body pressed against her own.

She kissed back with everything she had, trying to memorize every nook and cranny in that deliciously acerbic mouth of his, and they moved with such speed and passion that it was dizzying.

He pressed her against the wall and gripped her so strongly that it should have hurt, but it didn't, it felt right, like it was supposed to feel that intense, that raw and uninhibited.

Her hands roamed all over him, from his chest, to his biceps, to his hips, he ground into her, wanting to touch every bit of Lisa Cuddy that he could.

His hands flew through her hair, tracing patterns on her scalp, her beck, her back, her breasts.

She moaned, breaking the kiss, and his lips moved to her neck, marking his territory, and everything that he did felt fantastic, like a little part of the reckless, passion-filled life that she was supposed to be living.

She gasped as he sucked on her soft skin, hard, and knew that the mark that would be there in the morning wouldn't matter, because the only thing that did matter was the _real_ of the situation, how everything was in technicolour, sounds were muted and amplified at the same time, the sensations and emotions flowing together seamlessly, creating an experience that she knew she wanted to feel again and again and again.

She was aware of hands, reaching up the blouse that she was wearing, and she let them roam, moaning and whimpering at the feel of his pianist's fingers touching her so gently and so roughly at the same time.

It was bliss, it was like being on fire, and it was everything that she had never felt with a man before.

The fell onto the couch, and she was vaguely aware of the sound of spilled coffee, but that didn't matter anymore, not when she could feel him, everything, his lips, his chest, his hands, his legs, his arousal, all around her, the roughness of his stubble on her chest, kissing every inch of skin that he could get to (which, of course, was quite a lot).

Her hands tried to reach everywhere at the same time, but even in their passion, they couldn't defy physics.

She couldn't fully immerse herself in him, not when there were limits to how far her tongue could go into his mouth, to how much they could do in the doctor's lounge with the possibility of anyone coming in, to see their boss making out with an insane man.

But feeling, it was too much for her, and his hands, they were like music to her, beautiful in their capacity to convey emotion.

She gasped, again, and again, as he made his way down with his mouth, her shirt was lifted and he teased her stomach with his lips, leaving feather light kisses on the soft skin he found there.

He lifted the hem of her skirt up, licking a trail down to her panty-line.

"House…" she half gasped, half moaned. "Someone's going to see us."

"Doesn't matter." he muttered, already too far gone in the experience of her.

Chase thought that that was the moment to interrupt them.

"Too late." came a suspiciously Australian accented voice from the door way.

They both looked up to see House's oldest duckling watching them with an amused (and slightly turned-on) look on his face.

"Dr. Chase… I, oh my god…" Cuddy sputtered, getting up off the couch.

"Don't worry about it. My lips are sealed." the younger doctor said, making the motion with his hands. "About time, too."

"Yeah, yeah, screw off, Chase." House said. The intensivist left without another word, and Cuddy looked back at House with a red face.

"We shouldn't have done that." she said, out of breath.

"There are a lot of things that we shouldn't have done." he replied. "But that wasn't one of them."

She looked at him, still completely aroused and yet aware of what they had just been doing.

"Back to my place?" he asked, winking at her.

"Let's hope Wilson doesn't barge in on my fun again." he said seriously. "That sure screwed things up. Oh wait, he's in a hospital bed."

"Ass." she muttered, slapping his arm lightly.

"Cold-hearted bitch." he retorted, slapping her right back.

"Don't I know it." she muttered, and leant into him. "You're a real bastard, you know that?"

"Yeah." House said, smiling down at her. "But you still love me, right?"

Her only answer was to kiss him, long and hard, and that was all the response he needed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Pillow Talk.**

House woke up, because he couldn't breathe.

No, he wasn't having a heart attack, or anything else dramatic like that.

Someone's arm was just covering up his airway.

"Cuddy…" he groaned, after pushing the offending limb off of his face. "Are you _trying_ to kill me?" His bed partner opened her eyes tentatively, before opening them completely.

"House… what?"

"Oh, no, you've lost all memory of the last few days! Why are you in bed with your least favourite employee, when the last time you checked, you were still sleeping with that boy toy? Egad, rush the Dean to her hospital! There's something wrong with her brain! It was probably all of the mind blowing sex she was having with that world-famous diagnostician! Maybe if he gets his ass out of her bed, she can order him to figure out what's wrong with her!" Cuddy rolled her eyes at him.

"What now, House?" she asked sleepily. "It's… two in the morning."  
"You were trying to kill me. I know it was you, because no one else has an arm that soft. An evil, insidious arm, mind you."

"I still don't get it."

"Your arm was covering my face, and I couldn't breathe. Maybe we should sleep in separate beds. I read somewhere that it's good for building strong relationships. That is, if you have sex in one bed first. No sex is generally a relationship killer."

Cuddy blinked at the word _relationship_.

Was that what they were going to be doing now?

"Oh snap…" House said, picking up on her silence. "I just said the 'R' word. Don't worry, I won't say it again. Lord knows you're going to want to keep me your dirty little secret. It's almost sexier that way. Sneaking around the hospital, meeting for a late night rendezvous in the sleep lab, cameras suspiciously turned off, lusty little looks shot at each other when we think no one's looking. That'll put the spice back into your love life."

She shot him a look.

"Oh dear, did I hurt little Cuddles' feelings? Now_ just_ because you didn't have a good sex life with your previous man-"

"We had a fantastic sex life, thank you very much." Cuddy retorted.

"Oh? You show him some of the moves I taught you way back when?"

"You mean the moves _I_ taught _you_? They're obsolete now. I should know, I've been subscribing to dominatrix weekly."

"Mmm, on the off-chance that you'd get some sort of opportunity for action? I'm sure there wasn't much opportunity for practice. Not much you can do in the Kama Sutra with a Rabbit and a picture of Brad Paisley."

"Oh, you _wish_ I didn't have much opportunity for action. On the few dates that you didn't manage to interrupt, I cut to the chase pretty quick."

House made a face.

"Don't like the idea of me with other men?" she asked sweetly.

"Nope." he said cheerfully. "Other women, however…"

"Oh, you'd _like_ that, wouldn't you?"

"Damn right I would. You have no idea how much great stuff I've gotten out of you and Thirteen, or you and Stacy, or hell, even you and Cameron."

Something flashed across Cuddy's face.

"Still sore about me sleeping with her, are we? You're lucky it wasn't Thirteen, I might have gotten distracted from my true goal."

"What, getting into my pants?"

"What else would it have been? Certainly not showing you that you've been acting like a fourteen year-old girl and that I'm what you've been after your whole life."

"My whole life?" she scoffed, rolling over to look him in the eye directly. "You think I spent the years after I hit puberty dreaming about the crass, sarcastic asshole with a bad work ethic and a gimpy leg who would steal my heart?"

"I knew it was my crappy work ethic that got you hot!" he teased, reaching over to cup her cheek. "You forgot drug addict and felon."

"You weren't convicted." she replied, kissing him lightly. "And you're not a drug addict."

"Oh? How would you know that; you've been spending the last few months avoiding me. For all you know, I could've been hitting the streets for my heroin fix. You wouldn't have noticed, you were too busy playing happy family with a crack baby and a private investigator." His tone was playful, but she could still sense the bitterness behind his words.

"I'm _sorry_; I guess I was just too deep in _denial_ about my utter infatuation with your _handsome_, rugged mug. Next time I'll get the 'I don't care for rules' doctor to come role-play with me and my _crack baby_." she retorted, knowing that taking offense at his comments simply wasn't how their game was played.

"Oh, not when there's a child in the room. I wouldn't want her to get any ideas. You never know what kind of kinky sex moves will show up in her subconscious when that hot boy from the basketball team finally makes his move on her."

"Getting all over-protective father on me already? It's a little early for that; you don't even call her by her real name."

"What was it again? Rhonda? Rebecca? Rayanne? Roxanne? Remy? I do think I know a Remy…" She rolled her eyes at him again.

"Now I'm only going to say this once…" Cuddy said teasingly. "Rachael. Rachael Cuddy."

"It's not going to be Cuddy for long." House said.

"Yeah? You figure she'll join a polygamous cult at age eight and get married to some guy named Fischer?"

"No," House replied. "She'll have to change it when I marry her mother."

Cuddy let out a small laugh.

"Right. The day you marry me is the day you do all your clinic duty without some ulterior motive. And yes, sex IS an ulterior motive." she added at the lecherous look on his face.

"Oh, Cuddy, have you stopped believing in me so quickly? We were doing so well…"

"Right. Even when we've been together for thirty years, I'm still not going to trust me."  
"You figure we'll last that long?"

"You don't want us to?"

"Of course, I want us to, _I_ want to be the one to lie to you and say that no, your breasts are _not_ sagging. I still have faith in your ass, though. No way _that_ supertanker's going down."

"Thanks," she said dryly, smacking his arm. "Really upped my self esteem. I can't say the same about your 'man parts' though. What with all the Vicodin you've downed over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if 'Little Greg' went and shriveled up."  
"That really hurts, Cuddy. Never insult a man's… manhood. It hurts his manliness."

"Like you _need_ any more boosts to your ego."

"I'm _easily_ the biggest guy you've been with. I'm at _least_ twenty."

Cuddy laughed pretty hard at that. "Centimeters, maybe…" House looked rather hurt at her comment.

"No, inches. It's America. Men measure their penises with inches. None of that nasty metric system crap. Real men don't need uniform conversion factors. And real men have large johns."  
"You mean like Lucas? He's pretty well hung…"

"Come _on_, I've taken a piss with him before. A half-foot, at the most. I don't see how you could have had sex with someone so badly endowed."

"You're right; your Olympian penis was a godsend. How could I _ever_ go back?"

"I don't know. You can probably avoid the withdrawal symptoms if you screw me at least once a day, though. Blow jobs will work just as well."

"If you think I'm going to give you oral sex with nothing in return, you've got another thing coming, Mr. My Man Parts Trump All. You'll be expecting a lot of cold showers with that attitude."

"Ooh, a woman who can stand up for herself. See, all anyone could say before was 'That'll be $50, Mr. House.' Ha ha. Did you catch what I did there? I just made a hooker joke, 'cause I was so pathetic before you found it in your heart to let me into your bed. I'm certainly not going back to Slutty Sues working their way through teacher's college."

"Very funny, House. You're a real comedian. You could quit your day job; it'd sure take a load off me."

"Oh, we wouldn't want that, would we? After all, I'm the only reason your fat old donors consider giving money to the hospital."

"Until they meet you, that is." Cuddy shot back.

"I think," House started, twirling his fingers through her hair. "I think that you're getting a little to snarky for your own good."

"Oh? Going to discipline me now, Dr. House?"

"You wish. No, I was just going to withhold sex. Disciplining you wouldn't do anything. Probably turn you on. You administrator types love to be controlled."

"What happened to your dominatrix speculations?"

"I've seen you in bed. What was it, four times now? Five? The day was just a big, orgasmic blur…"

"You're the one who keeps waking me, up, you should've been keeping track. My god, you're insatiable."

"Actually, I _am_ your god. And yes, I do have quite the appetite for sex."

"Did you wake Cameron up this much? Woman of her stamina wouldn't have been able to handle it."

"Oh, thanks for bringing _her_ up. I was just about ready to get going again. And for the record, we only did it once. Can't take that much passionless sex."

"Oh? You didn't fall onto the sheets with a wild, fervent flurry of kisses, unable to take your hands off her for more than a few seconds, every passing second adding to the lust that you felt?"

"You _must_ have taken that straight out of a romance novel. That level of recitation requires at _least_ a twenty-time re-read. Did it get a little lonely, having no man to share your life with? Did you fall in love with a long-haired, buff-chested barbarian, whose appetite for glory was only matched by his passion for you (and all the fantastic sex)? You _do_ know that people don't dissolve into a puddle at the merest touch of their one true love, right?"

"I figured that out a long time ago, House. So, you and Cameron…?"

"It was a comfort fuck."

"Comfort fuck?"

"Well, there's the pity fuck, the 'I'm so sad and pathetic, please screw me to make me feel like I wasn't dumped because I was so bad in bed', and the old people fuck, which I would rather not get into, seeing as it contains copious amounts of Viagra, and then there's the comfort fuck, the 'Man, nothing's going right in our lives, maybe we should have sex to make each other feel worthwhile.'"

"You were just feeling _so_ empty because I was screwing Lucas, who, by the way, is most _definitely_ more than a half-foot."

"Hey, hey, hey, _never_ talk about another man's junk when you're in bed. Unless you're having a threesome, and that's not going to happen here, unless it's with Thirteen."

"What about _Wilson_?"

"Wilson?" House sputtered. "Wilson? We are NOT having a threesome with Wilson, no matter _how_ mundane years of fabulous sex gets."

"A little defensive, aren't we? Something you want to tell me?"

"I am NOT gay."

"Didn't say you were." Cuddy laughed, loving how uncomfortable House had gotten. "Just maybe a _little_ bit attracted to those gorgeous brown locks and boyish face."

"Please don't talk about Wilson like that again." House said, his eyes completely serious.

"Why, is it stirring up _feelings_? You two were always suspiciously close for two heterosexual men… Maybe there's something to those rumours."

"What rumours?" House asked quickly.

"Oh, come on, House, you can't tell me you haven't heard any. The smart money's actually on a secret gay relationship, hidden since the beginning of time. Apparently, you two have a lot of chemistry."

"Chemistry? With Jimmy? I mean, I know it's hard for _anyone_ to resist me, but Wilson? He's the most notorious panty-peeler Princeton's ever known. You don't get into a woman's pants with tea and sympathy alone."

"If you two could just hear yourselves talk to each other… well, maybe you wouldn't have cared so much about my relationships if you had just realized the _truth_. You and James Wilson are meant to be. Hopefully gay marriage will be legalized by the time you two get your acts together. You could adopt two little boys from Africa, and run a little private clinic together out in Saudi Arabia."

"Saudi Arabia?'

"It's hot out there. More opportunities to take each other's shirts off."

"Okay, seriously, joke's over. It is definitely against the bedroom rulebook to talk about your partner's gay relationship."

"Ah ha! So you _are_ sleeping together. I knew it. I put a thousand in, who knows how much I'll get."

"No, we're _not_. Now shut up, or I'll start talking about you and Thirteen's secret lesbian affair. Now I'm sure you know how many rumours there are about _that_."

"Just because we'd make the most attractive couple. And it doesn't bother _me_. Verbalize your fantasies all you like, I'll be imagining you giving Wilson head in a back alley at two in the morning after a night out at the gay bar."

House's eyes went as wide as saucers.  
"I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. And most attractive couple? That's definitely you and me. No way you and Ms. Huntington's have anything on _our_ smoking chemistry. Sparks light up every time we're in the same room together."

"That's just the sound of your brain frying from all the alcohol. No, Dr. Hadley and I are _definitely_ sexier that you and I. By at _least_ ten points."

"Hmm, unless we're playing golf, in which case, us having fewer points means we're better. I swear though, if you leave me for the dying girl-"

"You'll have to shack up with Wilson. Get ready for nights of toenail painting and facial scrubs. I hear he's a real girl."

"You heard that from me. I swear, every morning, the hair dryer's on. Does he really have to own that many ties?"

"So, you're saying has exhibits excessive personal care habits?"

"He's NOT gay. And neither am I. You know, all this talk about Lucas's penis and Wilson's sexuality has really taken away from the real purpose of me waking you up."

"I thought it was to get my 'evil, insidious arm' out of your face."

"Okay, but the purpose of keeping you awake was more sex."

"Seriously, House? I have to get_ some_ sleep, I'm going in to work tomorrow, and so are you."

"One day of all-day sex with House too much for you? Need to escape to the sanctuary of your perfectly-run hospital?"

"Yes, actually, I do. It's been an exhausting week, what with Cameron's departure, and Wilson's suicide attempt, and you want to exert me more?"

"I don't care so much about you, actually. It's more about me. I can take care of it myself, if you'd prefer. Just be prepared to hear a lot of commentary."

"Don't worry; I'm used to you calling out Wilson's name."

"I did _not_."

"Are you sure? I thought it was all just an 'orgasmic blur'."

"I do NOT call out Wilson's name during sex. Ever. It's always been yours."

"Oh? And how long's this secret, burning desire for me been going on?"

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

"Seriously, House. If we're going to be doing this, I have to know _everything_." She put a fake earnest look on her face, and gripped his hand tightly.

"And what exactly is _this_?"

"Us having sex, frequently, stop avoiding the question."

"So I'm just going to be your sex toy? Lucas had family privileges, where are mine?"

"How long?"

"_Is_ this going to be serious?"

"House!"

"Cuddy!"

"Just answer my question."

"I can't, what if you don't love me enough?" he pouted.

"I love you a hell of a lot more than you deserve, is _that_ good enough?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Aren't you supposed to say something back?"

"Okay fine, I've always had a thing for you, as I may have explained, but it all started with those injections. That round, supple ass kept staring me in the face… well, you can imagine."

"Aren't you supposed to tell me something else?"

"No, that's it. That's when the jealousy really started."

"Tell me something in return…?"

"In return to what?"

"How can you be a world-renowned diagnostician and so dense at the same time?"

"I'm just good at multitasking, I guess."

"No, you're not. You're suppose to say 'I love you too, Cuddy, don't leave me or I just might fall apart.'"

"I already told you that I loved you."

"Yeah, yelling it to my face in the middle of a heated argument in my office doesn't exactly scream romantic."

"_I_ thought it was pretty romantic."

"From _your _point of view, maybe. To me it was just a pain in my ass."

"Oh, you _felt_ something, my little love muffin."

"Yeah, blind rage. Why is it so hard for you to say? It's just three little words."

"Stacy used to get on my case about this too. I already told you that I love you; I don't need to keep telling you. You already know."

"What, you don't want to _wear it ou_t?"

"It's stupid to keep saying it, like the more you do, the more you actually love the person. I love you, and if you for some reason forget that, then I don't see why I'd want to be with you."

"Okay."

"Okay? Aren't you going to lecture me about the importance of showing affection?"

"No, Wilson would do that. It makes sense. That's how you work. If you don't need to constantly remind me about your feelings, then that's fine."

"Great. Glad we got that out of the way. I love you, you love me, I started getting really hot for you when I started aiding you in your efforts to procreate, and we're going to be together forever. Can we get to the sex?"

"You are most definitely the most insatiable man I've ever been with."

"Well, with a pool of about five and a half, that's not saying much."

She smacked him in the arm.

"Would you mind keeping the comments about my sex life to yourself?"

"Yeah, actually. Seeing as the only person in it is going to be me from now on. And I like to brag a lot. I have good reason to."

"Yeah, yeah, you're a sex god. Can we get this over with?"

"Over with? This is going to be the best orgasm of your life."

"That's what you said last time."

"Everybody lies."

"So maybe you just lied about the orgasm."  
"Jesus Cuddy, shut up and have sex with me."

"That's real encouraging. How about asking nicely?"

"Oh Cuddy, goddess of Sex, _please_ screw me into a coma."

"Now that was romantic."

"You know me, I don't disappoint."

"We'll see about that."

"Oh, we _will_."

He wiggled his amazingly dexterous eyebrows at her.

"That eyebrow thing was really creepy, House."  
"Yeah?"

He did it again.

"Stop it!"

"You know what else it creepy? We call each other House and Cuddy in bed."

"I am NOT calling you Greg."

"Glad we cleared that up, Cuddy."

"Mmm hmm. Hurry up. Or did I drain you of all your energy?"

"Yeah, right. The love machine doesn't run out of energy."

"How's your leg?"

"Thanks for bringing _that_ up. Two mood killers in bed, me giving Wilson fellatio, and my leg. It's fine, by the way. All the endorphins, plus I took about twenty Advils."

"House!"

"Okay, like ten. Are we going to argue, or are we going to have sex?"

"What do you think?"

"Right now, I'd say it's about fifty-fifty."

She poked him, hard.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Stop talking and screw me already."

"I love it when you talk like that, Cuddy."

"House!"

"Okay, okay. Preparing for re-entry, in T minus ten… nine… eight… seven…"

"House, I swear if you don't stop fooling around…"

"You'd never cut off my testicles. You need them too much."

"No. But I will tell Wilson that you screamed his name."

"But I didn't."

"That's what you think."

"Now who's wasting time?"

"Fine. I'll just go back to sleep. See you at work, House."

"Cuddy…" He reached over and grabbed her breast.

"House!" she squealed.

"That's more like it. Now what were we doing?"

"Bickering. Ow! Okay, 'love machine', let's get this party started."

"That's what she said."

"House!"


End file.
